Question for those in the know.

I still have an old school dial up connection. On the best days I can get about 45/k.

We have been pondering upgrading to DSL. But the other day I noticed something called "high speed dial up".

Does anyone know what that is and how it works? They claim it is 6x faster than normal dial up.

Thanks

High speed dial-up may be 6 times faster than regular dial-up but the cheapest DSL (ATT - $14.99/mon.) is claimed to 10 times faster. They claim their Elite DSL (at 34.99/mon.) to be 100 times faster than dial-up. ATT DSL where available comes in 4 different service levels. If you sign up online the service you select is guaranteed for a year and there is no contract to sign. We have ATT DSL Pro and have been very satisfied with it. Just stay away from their browser, it's junk.

This may be what you're referring to.
Link

There really is no comparison between DSL and dial up and in almost all markets it's not that much more expensive. I can not imagine surfing the internet with dial up anymore, sites everywhere are so graphic intensive now.

We have cable modem now, but are getting bitter with Charter slowly jacking the rates up. How much slower is DSL than cable? We had the old dial up and would dread returning to that but are looking for options, 14.99 a month looks real nice even if it is only 75% as fast as cable for $45.00/mth. Any insight?

I recently switched from Charter, for price reasons alone, to SBC/ATT DSL same speed(3meg) for 1/3 the price on a special promotion in September; 1 year commitment. Also I got 3 months credit for switching from cable.

Sweet!

quote:

Originally posted by runningdirt:
We have cable modem now, but are getting bitter with Charter slowly jacking the rates up. How much slower is DSL than cable? We had the old dial up and would dread returning to that but are looking for options, 14.99 a month looks real nice even if it is only 75% as fast as cable for $45.00/mth. Any insight?

Do you do a lot of really big downloads? If you do, you may notice a difference, but since you were using dial up previously, I'm guessing that's not the case. I don't think you'll notice any significant difference as a causual user/internet surfing. Often you can get the first 30 days free. Try to overlap your cancelation with the start up of your new service so you can back out of both if you're really disappointed. I've had cable in the past and am on DSL now. I think cable was definetly faster, but I don't really notice much of a difference now. DSL works very well for me. Blows dial-up away. If anything spend the $50 or so and get more RAM for your computer if you need it. That's a way better investment IMO.

the only difference I could guess at is the faster dial-up access uses the V92 type modems which are newer then the old V90.

quote:

What makes a V.92 modem faster than V.90 modem?
The quick connect feature of a V.92 modem cuts the modem negotiation or handshake time by up to 50% so you can dial-in faster. The main feature that makes a V.92 modem faster than a V.90 modem is V.44 the new compression protocol. It is based upon a compression scheme that can speed up your web browsing as much as 50%. Not all V.92 modems are required to have V.44 data compression.

http://www.v92.com/faqs/

Thanks, I always trust someones opinion who has used something over advertising!