DSL vs cable internet?

[Nick]

I know what you are thinking? DSL to cable is an easy answer. I'd have to agree with you but having been ONLY on DSL my entire internet life i'm stuck questioning it. When I told the guy at Verizon my plans to switch to cable internet for higher speeds he told me i'd be "sharing" the cable with my neighborhood. That I would see significantly slower speeds. At first I thought he told me this just to sway me from switching but now I am unsure after googling it.

I will be upgrading from a 3mbps DSL connection to a 10mbps cable connection. Will me "sharing" this connection with my neighborhood hurt my speeds at all? I live in a rural area and I doubt any of my neighbors are torrenting XD

Any information on the subject would be most appreciated (although I will most likely switch anyway)

Thanks

PS: The ISP for the cable would be Bright House (road runner)

[plutonic]

It is true what your Verizon guy say, that is that you would be sharing the connection on cable and if you have any bandwidth hogs on your cable line, you could get slower speeds. For the most part you will get the advertised speed as, even if people are torrenting, how much can they torrent.

A good place to check out your current speed is http://www.speedtest.net

The reason that DSL will give you the speed advertised is that each individual subscriber is wired right to the phone company office and all of the connections are aggregated by a router known as a DSLAM onto a fiber line that goes to the company's operation center or other place where they exchange internet traffic such as a couple of internet "hotels" in New York or other large city.

[Boss]

The topic of "which is better and faster" has been a highly debated topic. Historically, DSL speeds have been slower but new technology lessons the speed gap between DSL and Cable Internet. DSL offers users a choice of speeds ranging from 128 Kbps to 3 Mbps. Cable modem download speeds are typically up to 2 times faster than DSL. The important thing to note about cable Internet connections is that cable technology is based on shared bandwidth with many factors influencing a users download speed. With shared bandwidth the speed fluctuates depending on the number of subscribers on the network.
With DSL, the connection is yours and not shared, and you tend to have a more constant speed. This is one reason why cable Internet providers don't often publish speed information or use phrases like "with speeds up to..." instead of listing something a little more precise and numerical. In more rural areas with fewer subscribers, you're bound to have faster download speeds than a subscriber in a metropolitan center.
Because cable modem speeds fluctuate, it is difficult to gauge an exact download speed. On the upload stream, however, cable and DSL are closely matched for speed. Both DSL and cable Internet speeds are largely dependant on the service provider and either the distance away from the switching station you are or how many