Difference between digital subscriber line and cable modem

Question

Compare and contrast digital subscriber line (DSL) and the cable modem. (Use bullets for each of the items you compare and contrast.  Give at least six key in points of comparison.) Which is more better, DSL or cable modems? Elucidate.

Answer 1

• Speed: (Advantage-cable modem) theoretically cable modem runs faster than DSL. Cable technology supports around 30 Mbps of bandwidth whereas most DSL can only reach up to 10 Mbps. But practically cable modem speed will go down if many users in your neighborhood are accessing the internet simultaneously. On the contrary the DSL speed varies with the physical distance from the service provider i.e. farther you live from your service provider slower will be the speed of internet and vice versa. Thus  when comparing the cable modem to DSL broadband it is obvious that the cable modem is faster than broadband DSL when bandwidth sharing is balanced. Though, in the real world there are a few instances where the advantage of the cable modem is eliminated because of technical reasons.

• Online security: Both DSL and cable provides abundant security features to protect your computers from spyware, malware, viruses and data breaches. The little extra advantage with DSL is that the subscribers do not share the line with other users DSL connections are much secured. With cable, you divide your connection with others in your region, but you will have a secure connection as long as you take full advantage of security features and keep your firewall settings on and up to date.

• Cost: DSL has less introductory price as low as $14 US dollars (USD) plus change per month (for the slowest plan), and cable Internet service tends to be 3 to 4 times more expensive because their plans are faster than these introductory DSL plans. The little introductory DSL price is for latest subscribers in most cases and requires a one-year contract, however it is a great deal whenever moving from dial-up. Yet for the mid-range plans, DSL tends to be cheaper than cable. And for high-speed plans cable usually becomes cheaper, though provides vary regionally and DSL technology is evolving to compete at higher speeds.

• Popularity (Advantage: Both) depending upon the specific requirements both cable and DSL line are matching up with the popularity. However in US cable modem still has more popularity than DSL which is slowly matching up whereas outside US, DSL holds and edge over cable modem

• Customer satisfaction: ( Advantage: DSL) Though the possible bandwidth for cable modem is 30 Mbps most service providers offers 1-6 Mbps for download and 768 Kbps for upload so as to accommodate more customers with the existing bandwidth. On the contrary DSL, if chosen carefully, with optimum distance and quality of telephone line, it gives better and consistent performance.

• Availability (Advantage: cable modem) the availability of DSL is restricted by distance. In common, this means that your home should be no more than 18,000 feet of phone wire length from the central office (i.e. a telephone company office that connects all of the home and business phone lines in a locality). To be able to get cable high-speed Internet, your home needs to be equipped for cable TV. So wherever you stay chances availability of cable modem is higher than DSL.

So to summarize we can say cable modem is a better option for domestic purpose internet and DSL can give better performance in case of bigger organizations.