[Triple Ace]

Well I have about had it with this crappy dial up and not being able to get DSL or Cable. So I am thinking about ISDN. I hear it is not as fast as DSL or Cable, but is faster than dial up. I also hear you can get decent pings for gaming as well. Of course I don't know to much about it. But if I can get off this crappy dial up connection and be able to avoid satellite, I would like to know more about it. It seems it will be along time before I will be able to get Cable or DSL again, even though I live just 5 minutes away from 1.5 to 8 mbps Cable goodness.

[Davros]

isdn rocks for ping better than dsl or cable

isdn is 64k a sec single channel but you will get 64k sec not like dial up were you never actaully get 56k
you can get 128k sec if you use 2 channels but you will pay extra

[Triple Ace]

ISDN gets better pings even though it is slower? I thought DSL and Cable would get the better pings. Oh well, shows how much I know. Anyway, I can't seem to find a price for ISDN or see if I can even get it.

[Turey]

ISDN gets better pings even though it is slower? I thought DSL and Cable would get the better pings. Oh well, shows how much I know. Anyway, I can't seem to find a price for ISDN or see if I can even get it.

well, it IS a fairly old and forgotten system...... It was top-of-the-line when I was running Windows 3.1.

[Descenterace]

Latency and bandwidth are two different things. ISDN puts less intermediary hardware between you and the Internet, so the delay is less. However, it can't transfer as much data at once.

[Ashrak]

aka if you decide to play eve your fracked

[Cyker]

Standard 2B ISDN, if you bond both lines together, runs at 128kbps, which is the same speed as low-end DSL.

As they say, the latency is better.

Depending on charges it can be a lot more expensive 'tho (In the UK, ISDN access is charged by the minute. x2 if you bond both B channels!)



Latency vs Bandwidth 101!
Latency/ping is how long it takes for a packet to get from A to B.
Bandwidth is how much crap that packet can carry in one go. (simplified)

e.g. - I could ring you up and read the contents of Wikipedia to you - You'd hear what I'm saying right away, but it would take years for you to get the whole thing. This is low-latency (Good), low-bandwidth (Bad).
OTOH, if I printed the whole thing out and sent it to you via overland snailmail, it'd take weeks to get to you, but once you get it you have the whole thing. That is high-latency (bad), high-bandwidth (good).

[Nix]

Very good example of explaining ISDN, I am impressed! 

[achtung]

It's, It's a series of tubes!

[Triple Ace]

Well forget that idea. It would cost me over 300 dollars to set up, plus the huge monthly fee. I guess its back to harrassing Comcast for me.