Selenia
join:2006-09-22
Pittsfield, MA
 ·Verizon Online DSL
 ·RoadRunner Cable
| reply to Authority
Re: [Home Network] latency / lag on DSL vs. cable
Used to be dsl hands down. Rogers still sucked at last check, but Roadrunner's first hop latency is way down from what it used to be. It now ties or beats Verizon and Bell Sympatico at close distance. Seems they have upgraded certain things. However, that is cancelled out by currently crappy routing over tbone.rr.com. I would still go with dsl if you're close to the CO. Latency and loss increase with distance, but a close range dsl connection is hard to beat. You need to consider cable relies on an RTS(request to send) signal from the modem to what essentially amounts to hub-based topology. Only 1 modem may send an RTS and begin sending in a single cycle, This may make retransmissions high at peak time on apps like online games, which transmit at a constant slow speed and are ping dependent. Even though your network latency might be ok, cable may lag during these times, usually in very short bursts. DSL typically won't suffer from this.
Depending on what you do, this all may be negligible. You might just want to check for best price or best reputation for provider, if that's the case. Packet shaping, etc may have more effect on your overall experience(depending which apps you use) than a few ms of ping time will, |
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NormanS
Premium,MVM
join:2001-02-14
San Jose, CA
·Pacific Bell - SBC
| said by Selenia  :I would still go with dsl if you're close to the CO. Latency and loss increase with distance... How close is "close"?
I am 9,156 feet from my DSLAM (which is in a CO; but DSLAMs can also be in RTs).
--
Norman
~Oh Lord, why have you come
~To Konnyu, with the Lion and the Drum |
|
deblin
Dark Side of the Moon
Premium,MVM
join:2001-09-01
Middletown, DE
| Upstream sync rate on DSL results in marginally lower RTT pings to the POP. I think going from 384k upstream to 608k upstream, I saw a drop in GW ping from about 11-12ms to 7-8ms. Not a huge difference, that, but of note.
Also, in my experience, DSL pings are much more consistent and stable. Cable tends to fluctuate quite a bit, at least it has in areas I've had Cable. This, as I said, can definitely vary by Comcast market.
Here's the ping to my gateway on my parents' Comcast connection (which is actually very good):
Pinging 71.200.176.1 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 71.200.176.1: bytes=32 time=9ms TTL=254
Reply from 71.200.176.1: bytes=32 time=8ms TTL=254
Reply from 71.200.176.1: bytes=32 time=6ms TTL=254
Reply from 71.200.176.1: bytes=32 time=7ms TTL=254
Reply from 71.200.176.1: bytes=32 time=9ms TTL=254
Reply from 71.200.176.1: bytes=32 time=7ms TTL=254
Reply from 71.200.176.1: bytes=32 time=10ms TTL=254
Reply from 71.200.176.1: bytes=32 time=7ms TTL=254
Reply from 71.200.176.1: bytes=32 time=7ms TTL=254
Reply from 71.200.176.1: bytes=32 time=7ms TTL=254
Reply from 71.200.176.1: bytes=32 time=11ms TTL=254
Reply from 71.200.176.1: bytes=32 time=7ms TTL=254
Reply from 71.200.176.1: bytes=32 time=8ms TTL=254
Reply from 71.200.176.1: bytes=32 time=7ms TTL=254
Reply from 71.200.176.1: bytes=32 time=11ms TTL=254
Reply from 71.200.176.1: bytes=32 time=6ms TTL=254
Reply from 71.200.176.1: bytes=32 time=15ms TTL=254
Reply from 71.200.176.1: bytes=32 time=8ms TTL=254
Reply from 71.200.176.1: bytes=32 time=6ms TTL=254
Reply from 71.200.176.1: bytes=32 time=7ms TTL=254
Ping statistics for 71.200.176.1:
Packets: Sent = 20, Received = 20, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 6ms, Maximum = 15ms, Average = 8ms
So it's 6-8ms most of the time, but with spikes to 10+ a few times (even 15). This is actually very good, I've seen it much more jittery. On DSL, though, when I'd ping my gateway, I'd see 10ms for every reply with a std deviation of less than 0.5ms. 
--
Hello...is there anybody in there? |
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NormanS
Premium,MVM
join:2001-02-14
San Jose, CA
·Pacific Bell - SBC
| This is what I see...
--
Norman
~Oh Lord, why have you come
~To Konnyu, with the Lion and the Drum |
|
en102
Canadian, eh?
join:2001-01-26
Valencia, CA
·RoadRunner Cable
·DSL EXTREME
| Some of that is due to location (i.e. San Jose to San Jose trace to yahoo.com)
L.A. to San Jose is a little farther
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Canada = Hollywood North |
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NormanS
Premium,MVM
join:2001-02-14
San Jose, CA
·Pacific Bell - SBC
| Yeah, but how far are you from your DSLAM? It is the latency to the gateway router which is what I am looking at. My DSLAM is 9,156 out. I'd be curious to see the latency on a DSL line at 15,000 feet; especially if they were on the Fast data path.
--
Norman
~Oh Lord, why have you come
~To Konnyu, with the Lion and the Drum |
|
en102
Canadian, eh?
join:2001-01-26
Valencia, CA
·RoadRunner Cable
·DSL EXTREME
| said by NormanS :Yeah, but how far are you from your DSLAM? It is the latency to the gateway router which is what I am looking at. My DSLAM is 9,156 out. I'd be curious to see the latency on a DSL line at 15,000 feet; especially if they were on the Fast data path. According to AT&T techs, I'm at ~12,000', and I'm on fastpath 3008/512kbps (which they no longer offer for me).
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Canada = Hollywood North |
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