GETTING BROADBAND ACCESS FOR HOME

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GETTING BROADBAND ACCESS FOR HOME
By Hanz Makmur -- March 6, 2001

Today, dialup networking via a 28.8k or 56k modem is not the only option for connecting your computer to the Internet. The old analog modems simply do not give the bandwidth nor the speed needed to access the multimedia content in today’s modern web pages.

Fortunately there are other options available to satisfy the need for speed and bandwidth at an affordable cost: DSL and Cable Modem services. DSL and Cable Modem service differ in their implementation. DSL uses your regular telephone line and a cable modem uses your cable-television coax cable. Both require a digital modem and an ethernet card on your PC.

Details of services

Below you will find the differences between DSL and Cable Modem services in Central New Jersey. It is important to know the difference between the two services because they are very different in quality but about the same in cost.

Service	DSL	Cable Modem
Monthly Fee	$39.95-$49.95	$39.95-$49.95
Modem Cost	Free¹	$99²
Usage	Unlimited	Unlimited
Connection	Must Connect	Always On.
Broadband Speed (downstream / upstream)	640k/90k (max) 200k/60k (average)	2M/50k - RCN half duplex 2M/128K - @Home 4M/2M - OptimumOnline
Software needed?	Yes	No
Availability	limited area	limited area
Service activation time	4-6 weeks	1hour
Installation	self install³	self install³
Require Phone line?	Yes	No⁴
Require cabletv service?	-	No
Require Ethernet card ?	Yes⁵	Yes⁵
Web space ?	Yes	No.
Email Accounts?	Yes	Yes
Can be shared with more than 1 computer	Yes⁶	Yes⁶
Can access AOL ?	Yes⁷	Yes⁷
Dialup Access ?⁸	150 hours	No
¹ with 1 year contract with Verizon ² with 2 year contract with OptimumOnline. Some cable companies rent the modem for $10/month. ³ some areas may required technician to come to your house which will cost more. ⁴ Half duplex cable modem from RCN may require additional phone line. ⁵ If you use USB or internal version of the modem, no etherent card is required. However USB or internal Modems limits your ability to share your broadband connection to more than one computer. ⁶ With additional DSL/CableModem router. ⁷ AOL users can subscribe to the "bring your own network plan" which costs $9.95 and uses the broadband network to turbo charge AOL. ⁸ This allow user a to use a telephone line to access the internet using regular analog modem in case the broadband connection is down or access the Internet from locations other than home.

My Experience with DSL Service

I was an early adopter of DSL. I had been waiting for broadband access at home for a long time. When DSL was available in my area in early spring 2000, I called Verizon (then Bell Atlantic) and signed up. At the time, the DSL service was new and I was charged $99 + shippping for the DSL modem. When I signed up, the sales person told me that the service would be available in 4 weeks. I got the DSL box within a week and waited for the service turn on date. On the day the service was supposed to be on, I connected the modem, installed the software and tried to access. I was not successful. This was a typical result experienced by many new DSL customers at the time. Many phone calls later, after being put on hold for a long time, I finally got to talk to someone who really had no clue as to what was going on. Looking at the review on the network at http://www.dslreports.com/nav/2/lhs made me realize the kind of quality to expect. It took me about 12 weeks to get my DSL to work.

Because DSL requires additional software on my computer, I also had to deal with many other software problems. Verizon used a modified version of Netscape for registration and that conflicted with my newer Netscape browser. At the same time the software required additional modules which was not previously installed on my computer to do its networking. DSL uses the PPPoE (Point to Point Protocol over Ethernet) protocol and this protocol must be installed on your computer for a DSL connection to be established.

Many reboots later when the Verizon software install was completed, my computer had changed in many places. I was forced to use an older browser and my computer was not behaving correctly. In the end, a full reinstallation of Windows98 was required before I was able to get my machine working and stable again.

After my DSL connection was activated, connecting to the network was like dialing up. I had to establish a network connection by clicking the connect button in order to establish a connection. Once the connection was established, I could then run any TCP/IP based software and enjoy the speed increase gained from DSL connection.

Speed wise, the DSL connection was fast. However, it was not as fast as promised. I was paying for 640Kbit/s downstream and 90Kbit/s upstream. My test yielded average 200Kbit/s downstream and 60Kbit/s upstream.

Also my DSL connection was also not as reliable as I would have liked it to be. It was down more times than I could count. Every time it was down there was no warning. It could be up after an hour of down time then go down again 5 minutes later. Later on I also found some incompatibility with SSH. For some reasons it would disconnect SSH sessions after so many minutes of connection time.

It took me 3 months to get my DSL connection and another 3 months for me to dump it. Luckily at the time, I was not under a service contract. Canceling my DSL connection cost me the DSL modem ($99+shipping) but at the same time, I no longer had to deal with an unreliable connection. It was basically down on average 3 of 7 nights by the end of July 2000.

My Experience with Cable Modem Service

By end of Summer 2000, Optimum Online service from Cablevision was available in my area. So I decided to give it a test. I never had a cable television at my home, so I called Cablevision about a deal which would give me free installation if I subscribed to a certain Optimum Family package. I signed up and got my cable service installed for free. Cablevision also had a 30 day warranty. Basically, if in 30 days I was not happy, I could cancel the service and pay nothing. Given a choice of paying $45 for a service man to come to connect the cable for my Internet connection or free connection with 30 days cable TV service, the free cable TV and free connection, I had cable TV service installed. I could always cancel the cabletv service if I didn’t like it within 30 days.

Getting Cable Modem service was easier than I imagined. All I had to do was to go to the Wiz at Menlo Park Edison, NJ. At the Wiz, I signed up a 2 year contract for cable modem service and paid $ 99 for the 3COM cable modem plus a free install kit. When I got home, all I had to do was to connect my cable modem to the cabletv coax cable and connect my computer to the cable modem via the supplied Ethernet cable. Instantly I got a broadband connection --no waiting, no software installation and no grief.

Speed wise, the cable modem connection was very fast. My test yielded an average of 4Mb/s downstream and 2Mb/s upstream. This is faster than I can get from inside the Rutgers network from my office. The uptime of cable modem service from Optimum Online was also a lot better than my Verizon DSL connection. I have only noticed 5 incidents of downtime in the last 5 months of service. One of which, Optimum Online notified all subscribers and sent a picture of its fiber network cut of by a bullet.

Other People’s Experiences

Because I work as a System Programmer, I also dealt with many help requests concerning broadband connections. In summary, the related calls confirmed the problems I had with Verizon DSL. I got no requests related to OptimumOnline or @HOME cable modem service but many problems with RCN’s cable modem service. In fact, the RCN cable modem service in Central Jersey is actually worse than Verizon DSL.

RCN was the first company that came out with cable modem service in our area. However, it came up with a half duplex cable modem service. This means that downstream data comes via the cable modem but upstream data goes out via a required phone line. Not only does this limit the upstream data to no more than 50Kbits/s, it also adds the cost of an extra phone line and additional modem dialup connect time. My last conversation with a RCN representative revealed that a full duplex cable modem system will not arrive until late 2002 in Central New Jersey.

The myth about DSL and Cable Modem.

Popular wisdom says that DSL is better than Cable Modem. The reasoning behind this is the fact that DSL is designed to get you the bandwidth you signed up for and be more secure, while cable modem connections are shared and insecure. A shared connection could be bad in theory. Many people are afraid that the shared connections reduces their privacy and they will have to share a fixed bandwidth with their neighbors.

In practice, things are leaning to the advantage of cable modem users. The privacy issue with cable modem is really non existent. The cable company has put certain safe guards in place to make sure that no one can "sniff" the network which make the privacy issue moot. It is true that you are sharing your broadband network’s fixed bandwidth with 1000 or so users. However the speed you get from cable modem will never be below the speed you get with DSL. Doing so would simply be bad business for the cable company.

DSL speed ratings in practice however is the opposite of user expectation. Signing up for 640/90 plan does not mean you will get 640Kbit/s down stream and 90Kbits/s upstream. The 640/90 plan basically means that this is the fastest speed you will ever get. In practice, you get on average of 200Kbits/s downstream and 60Kbits/s upstream.

Security wise, DSL and Cable Modems give you minimal security. Currently Cable Modem and DSL provider limit access to Microsoft Networking to prevent accidental sharing of PC with strangers. It is recommended that you get some firewall software or hardware to keep your computer secured. See: Securing and Sharing Your Home Broadband Connection for more details.