in all fairness, cable claims the same "up to" that DSL does.
I'm a network administration major - sorry for all the terms. Because I'm bored and procrastinating on my homework, I'll help ya out:
Simply put, the internet works like this:
you type in
www.aol.com
your computer sends a request out through your ISP all across the country to find the computer that IS
www.aol.com
you computer receives the information on the location of
www.aol.com
That is a ping...the time it takes for your computer to query and receive information to and from another computer, website, game server, or whatever on the internet
Now as far as connection speeds, its like this:
if you type in
www.aol.com, your computer knows where to go for the information.
www.aol.com now loads on your computer. That's your download speed because you're downloading information from
www.aol.com(same thing for downloading files from anywhere on the internet.)
now when you do an interactive game online like you stated, you have a two way communication going. Say you're playing chess on yahoo games. You pick up your piece and move it. That information is sent to yahoo's computers. That's upload.
Now lets break down your speed. You current receive 3Mbps download and probably 256Kbps upload. Notice the two terms, Mbps(megabits) and Kbps(kilobits). Roughly translated, there are 1000 kilobits in a megabit(just like the metric system)
If you went from 3Mbps download on ur cable to 1.5Mbps down on DSL, you'd be cutting your speed in half. If you go down to 768Kbps, you're cutting it by over 66%. Is it really worth the cost cut? At over 66% decrease, you WILL notice a difference in speed.
I hate charter as much as the next guy because they don't carry the NFL network. However, I can tell you the reason they are raising their rate(I believe) is because they are getting rid of the 3Mbps speed. Instead, they're giving you 5Mbps. That's an increase of 66% - sounds like a better direction to me
Hope that helps
