yeah, i just realised before your post and edited mine.

cranioscopical. that is a really, really, sad connection.

Yeah I noticed that you had edited yours while I was typing mine up. . . 

I had it worst on Friday at my parents' house. It was 0.23/0.22, ~500ms ping. But that was because I didn't know my parents' internet was limited so it got throttled to those speeds when I left an MMO Updater (essentially a bittorrent) running overnight.

Ok, I'll bite.

I've had DSL and Cable in many places, and my findings are that DSL can get you some packet loss under really high load (eg: torrents), but the normal uptime has always been extremely stable.
The advantage of DSL is that you have unbundled service in most countries (at least in the US and Belgium). Meaning, the company providing your physical line has to, by law, allow you to chose a different ISP. This is VERY important. Many people think they are stuck with something crappy like verizon, when in fact they can pick any ISP in the country offering dsl, including many good smaller ISP's.

When we lived in PA, we were with localisp (http://localisp.com/) - the advantage being that most of these smaller isp's don't have the TOS from hell. Verizon's TOS for example, last I checked, does not allow you to run any type of server (including game servers) or use third party voip. Not that they actually apply this in practice, but they are bastards for it nontheless.

With localisp I had 100% uptime. I ran a monitoring server from my connection and received alerts+logs when something was down, and in the few years we lived there it never happened. They also offered a redundant line which could serve as a backup if one goes down, for relatively cheap (If i want the same from comcast here i'll be broke in an instant). The only times things became unstable (read: packet loss) is when the upload bandwidth was consumed 100%. I solved that using QoS.

DSL was a lot slower, but it sure was magnitudes more stable.

I've had cable in the US from RCN and now Comcast Bussiness, both randomly cut out. When it's up, the connection is stable. Unlike dsl, using 100% upload does not cause packet loss, however, one day you may wake up to find your internet not working at all, when you call them they claim to be working on something or other,... I've experienced downtimes of >3 hours in the middle of the day on a monday. Bad mojo when you're in the middle of work, and rely on a connection to do your job.
If I were given the option again, I'd pick the uptime stability over the speed.

Interestingly, when I was in Belgium, the same story was repeated. I had DSL (belgacom) there and cable (telenet). The DSL service had very stable uptime, though gets funky when you max things out (need a good QoS setup in your router). Cable is stable when up, but more overall downtime. - That leads me to believe the phenomenon is inherit in the technologies used.

I haven't tried FIOS yet, it would be interesting to see how it compares in uptime versus speed.

Also, with cable your speed will vary up and down depending on where you live and the time of the day. (Everything is 'shared' with your neighbors so to speak) - This can work to your advantage when you live in the middle of nowhere, or disadvantage when you're in the city ;  while dsl lines are dedicated.



[edit]
PS: It's interesting to compare my speed and mouser's - same provider, same area, except he is more in the city than I am - (It's also a different plan, though not sure how much different)
[/edit]

VDSL50
[attachimg=#1]
The speedtest differs a little bit from server to server, but the dl/ul-rate ist rather stable. The best ping was about 20ms till now.
I also have IPTV and think the settopbox reserves a lot of bandwith that can record 4 streams in parallel while watching a 5th.
A look into my modem-settings shows the maximum rates:
DSL Downstream: 51392 kBit/s
DSL Upstream:     10004 kBit/s
Perhaps it gets faster when I switch off the STB?

I have been nothing but happy with my service.  Rock solid, FAST, polite and knowledgeable LOCAL support.  I pay $59 for 10/1.5, and even with all the college kids in town, during prime time, I still get almost 100% of my rated speed.  It has been this way since I first got broadband cable in 1999.  We bought our house in 2007 in a small town 45 minutes from where I first got cable, and the connection stayed the same.

I have cable, phone, all movie channels, and a PVR through them for a total of $180 a month.  Not the fastest connection nor the least expensive, but I would rather have a solid, reliable connection with good support and pay a little extra.

OK - I'll bite too:

Urealistic test ('cos 50 miles is pretty pointless on the net):

Manchester UK


More realistic:

San Jose California


Sad:

Perth, Australia
(using the appropriately named Server FastHit!!)

or

Toronto, Canada


Strange that Vancover is quicker to the UK than Toronto:


My main gripe is that upload speeds are totally pants - and there don't seem to be any UK providers that do better (unless someone can point me at one).

There has to be something wrong with these tests.  Here are two from two different servers in GB.  Must have more to do with the servers than with my ISP.


http://www.speedtest.net/result/944290743.png

http://www.speedtest.net/result/944298123.png

FOdder

So then does  MY ISP speed only count from my ISP's  server to me .  The rest is just dumb luck. ?

So then does  MY ISP speed only count from my ISP's  server to me .  The rest is just dumb luck. ?

Not exactly dumb luck, but yeah - there's no way your ISP can guarantee you'll get full bandwidth utilization to a remote server; the server might not be on a link that's fast enough, there might be traffic congestion, or you may be running through a slow route.

Well, at least I'm happy with Cox cable. BTW  I had FIOS when I lived in NY and it was VG, ( upgraded from DSL ) but I don't remember it as being any better than the cable I have now.

Yeah, cox is great.  I think the only significant difference you would see is the upload speed.  FIOS should have more than Cox.

I have been nothing but happy with my service.  Rock solid, FAST, polite and knowledgeable LOCAL support.  I pay $59 for 10/1.5, and even with all the college kids in town, during prime time, I still get almost 100% of my rated speed.  It has been this way since I first got broadband cable in 1999.  We bought our house in 2007 in a small town 45 minutes from where I first got cable, and the connection stayed the same.

I have cable, phone, all movie channels, and a PVR through them for a total of $180 a month.  Not the fastest connection nor the least expensive, but I would rather have a solid, reliable connection with good support and pay a little extra.

A few extra dollars is worth it.

Problem is, a lot of the time you really have no idea what the actual quality of an ISP is, and by the time you've found out, you're already locked into a multiple-year contract. Unpleasant.

So when shelling out for a more expensive plan, unless you already know the ISP & quality, it's a gamble.

$180 is pretty high though. I suppose the phone and movie channels though make it much more reasonable. $50 for movies and $50 for phone? $80 for reliable broadband? Doesn't sound bad at all.

I remember years ago when Korea Telecom's broadband was total garbage. That's changed though. They're extremely good now. (They bought enough equipment for an entire country, and ended up buying from all different vendors because nobody could supply them with enough. As such, mismatches caused problems for them at the start.)

@app103 - Yuck. Sorry to hear that.

DSL - 3mbps though the actual speed is roughly 2mbps

For the price I am paying for country dsl, in the city/town, you get 15mbps. 

Another reason why telcos need some kind of oversight/regulation. (Yes, on this issue I have some leftish tendencies.)

Some antivirus / antimalware that "mess up" with the Internet traffic are known to cause strange results.

BTW, this is what I get form here via 3G network: