Cable vs. Fiber - Knowledgeable Input Needed

This isn't really a troubleshooting thread btw, I need some expert input on a subject I'm not really familiar with

So currently I have my internet provided by Fios - 15mpbs up and 5 mpbs down. Today a salesman from Cablevision offered me an "upgrade" - 50mpbs up and 8 mpbs down. Now what I understand is that with a fiber optic network, what they advertise (in this case 15/5) is what you usually get. With cable the bandwidth is shared between people in your neighborhood, so one rarely gets that full 50mbps. However, there's so much conflicting information on the internet about this I'm not sure what to believe.

So my question is, should I stay with Fios or switch to Cablevision (cost not considered)? If I do switch, how much of that 50mbps could I realistically use with a cable network?

Thanks for your help.

 

Stick with Fios. If cost is not an issue but speed is, call and get an upgrade to your service.

 

I believe you have up and down mixed up. Either way, it all depends on how you use the internet. If you game then I would stick with fios because fios has the lowest ping. If you do more data sharing and downloading then the cable is definitely a good upgrade.

Keep in mind, this is assuming the prices are the same.

 

Nooo, what really matters is traffic shaping and service blocking done by the ISP and what their bandwidth caps might be.

Try and get that info, in writing, from an ISP. Probably can't.

 

Stick with FIOS and get a upgrade if you need more speed. If you get away from the Actiontec router you can gain some performance too. The lags will definitely be greater on cable. I switched from a cable service to FIOS, even though it had a lower speed it ran faster.

 

Perhaps you can keep FIOS and try cable for a month if you have enough reasons to check it out. The only problem with FIOS is Verizon, and it (broadband) costs more than cable around here.

If your neighborhood is tilting to FIOS, the cable load is decreasing. I wonder what happens to FIOS QoS if *everyone* switches phone/internet/tv/streamingcontent over to it.

GK

 

Call FiOS and tell them the deal the cable company is offering you, and while you've been happy with the FiOS it's hard to ignore that kind of offer, and ask if they can give you something similar. That's how competition works

As for FiOS, it depends on how over-provisioned their access points are. Generally DSL and fiber solutions don't tend to experience the same neighborhood-level drops that cable does due to their point-to-point instead of hub style architecture.

 

Bandwidth generally doesn't have nothing to do with connection type but quality. You can get 50/8 with Cablevision - thta's what I have and get it all the time. You can also however have issues and not get it all the time or at all.



Definitely no complaints here. I did have issues at first but then I got a DOCSIS 3.0 modem and problems went away. This was when it was 30/5 then the FREE upgrade to 50/8 came along and it was just a call and modem rebooted and off i went.

It feels good to tell the boss my home connection is faster than his at work. I pay $44.95 (1yr deal however) for those speeds. Imagine how nice it was the other day when internet was down at work (next town over) so I came home and downloaded a Windows 7 X64 SP1 ISO - 3.xGB at 6MB/s from Microsoft TechNet and was done and back to work in no time! The download took like 10mins or something, it was ripping!

So for the OP, If i were you i'd at least test it out. The come set it up and you just plug in your router and see how the speeds are. If it sucks after a week then just cancel. Simple as that.

 

Pretty much happy with my ISP (Using Fiber) here in Norway.
I mean i could get better down speeds with the stuff by the other ISPs that use regular cable but i do love high upload speeds.

 

Very satisfied with the speeds I get over here in Singapore. Look at my sig for the speedtest results. This was done when downloading torrents.

It usually hits 220Mb/s for download and 110Mb/s for upload. This is more than promised by SingTel (the ISP here). I only pay around US$85 per month for these speeds with IPTV (with some Barclays and Europa soccer League) and free unlimited home phone line. I can download on average at 26MB/s!

I also get 30% discounts for the 5 mobile phone lines I have in my household.

What a deal,right? How much do you guys pay per month?

 

I would tend to agree with blue68f100. In particular, one of the problems with cable that doesn't get a lot of discussion (but one that I've had to deal with several times) is the age of the cable connection from the last main company router (or switcher, or whatever you want to call it) to your wall socket. The network signal on coax cable is very sensitive to noise, and even a loose coax connection can cause a significant drop in your perceived network speed. If the coax cable connecting your wall socket to the company's main trunk is more than a few years old, it could also have a lot of tiny little cracks and failures in the plastic coating and the shielding that would also introduce a lot of noise into the network signal.

For example, my in-laws have an optimum cable broadband connection; they also used to have coax cables that were 30 years old (the original cables that were installed when the cable company first wired their neighborhood). Eventually the noise on the cable got so bad the cable TV box could no longer properly sync with the company's central systems and started going into endless loops of trying to make contact and failing. No TV signal finally convinced them to replace that 30 y.o. coax, and I think the network speeds we saw after that were more than double the speeds from before the coax was replaced.

That's not to say that there aren't folks who get faster/better service with a cable company than they would get with FiOS, it's just a good reason for taking the advertised up/down speeds with a large grain of salt, and for not assuming that those advertised speeds are one-to-one comparable.