DSL versus Cable

I dont mean to use this blog as a board to review which is faster - DSL versus Cable. But definitely I did do some benchmark tests to find out which is faster DSL or Cable. And I could not resist blurting that out at my blog. I have been a SBC DSL customer for the past 1+ year. I had a promotional rate of 26 dollars + hidden taxes for the first one year. Since November I have been paying almost 60 dollars for my internet and phone bills...basic phone service with caller ID and SBC DSL (1.5 Mbps down and 256kbps upload). As a move towards reducing my internet costs, i decided to order cable internet and finally got basic cable TV + high speed internet from Comcast (local cable provider). The free cable modem (leased from Comcast for 3 dollars per month) didnt seem to work properly (long story) and Comcast was ready to send a technician to fix it for 50 dollars. I told them to "scr3w y0urs3lf" and went ahead and bought a cable modem from a local store.

The new cable modem from the local store did an awesome job and tonight i am a proud owner of two internet connections - Comcast Cable and SBC Yahoo DSL. I decided to use some bandwidth testers to measure download and upload speeds. Here are the test results..

Test Setup:

• 3.4 Ghz Intel CPU running Windows Media Center edition 2005
• 1 Gig ram
• 10/100 nic connected back to back to Cable modem for Cable speed tests
• 10/100 nic connected back to back to DSL modem for DSL speed tests

Test Results:

Test no 1: SBC Yahoo DSL has a online tester. I used the service to test both my DSL and Cable internet connection.

DSL -

Download speed - 1111 kbps

Upload speed - 306.98 kbps

Cable -

Download speed - 1669 kbps

Upload speed - 367.81 kbps

It looked like there is not much difference between both the flavours. So I decided to use another website and after much googling found a website which seem to perform much better with bandwidth measurements. Read more about it at Test no:2.

Test no 2: Download /Upload tests at www.Testmy.net

Visit "testmy.net" website to perform Upload as well as Download measurements. The unique feature with this website is that they measure bandwidth with different file sizes.

Cable : Download tests (Speed of connection/File Downloaded at)

Test 1: 3098 kbps/378 KBPS (Kilo Bytes per second)

Test 2: 2737 kbps/334 KBPS

Test 3: 2474 kbps/302 KBPS

Cable : Upload tests (Speed of connection/File Uploaded at)

Test 1: 361 kbps /44 KBPS

Test 2: 362 kbps / 44 KBPS

Test 3: 361 kbps / 43 KBPS

Conclusion : Cable seems to have an average Download speed of 2.5-3 Mbps and Upload speed of 364 kbps

DSL : Download tests (Speed of connection/File Downloaded at)

Test1: 1306 kbps / 159 KBPS

Test2: 1210 kbps / 148 KBPS

Test3: 1302 kbps / 159 KBPS

DSL : Upload tests (Speed of connection/File Uploaded at)

Test 1: 284 kbps / 35 KBPS

Test 2: 286 kbps / 35 KBPS

Test 3: 284 kbps / 35 KBPS

Conclusion: DSL seems to have an average Download speed of 1.2-1.3 Mbps and Upload speed of 284 kbps.

Test no 3:

A simple file download of 8 mb in size took 18 seconds on an average (based on 3 successive tests) via Cable modem.

The same file download (8 mb) took 50 seconds on an average via DSL modem(based on 3 successive tests)

Definitely Comcast cable is outperforming SBC DSL in download speeds. Upload speeds are failry the same. After all this blog did become a benchmarking arena for Cable vs DSL.