DSL versus Cable ISP's

[Darian]

Would the Lurkers please give me a basis for discussion?    I need to understand what differences there are between DSL and Cable connections, what kinds of obstacles each might encounter on the internet in completing my connection to USWest and what, if any, negative sides there might be to DSL, should I switch ISP's.
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I've been on DSL for five years now, with Verizon. In those five years, there have been a grand total of eight HOURS that I've dropped connection. Six of those hours were in one chunk when they lost a piece of hardware in their data center, and the other two hours were temporary outages when the vestiges of hurricanes blew through here last summer and interrupted actual phone service.

The chief advantage to cable over DSL is simply speed. If you don't engage in a lot of heavy downloading of Very Large Files, there's no benefit at all outside of any financial benefit you get from package deals offered by your cable company. The consensus among folks I work with* who have used both is "Cable's way faster, but DSL is far more reliable."

And, of course, with DSL, although your pipe is smaller, that pipe is ALL yours. With cable, your download speeds can actually drop below DSL download speeds if your neighborhood gets particularly busy (and TV-watching counts toward the total available bandwidth).

* - And we work for a company which effectively re-sells both cable and DSL, so we don't have a horse in this race.