Question

With DSL ISPs, dedicated lines usually connect to the local offices to the location where the service is provided (i.e. residential homes). In contrast, with Cable ISPs, the connection is shared between multiple homes in a neighborhood. In spite of this configuration that is clearly to the benefit of DSL users, service provided by Cable ISPs may still be superior to the one provided by DSL providers. Explain the reasons behind this. Further, if you are hired by a DSL provider, and taking into account that changes to the company’s infrastructure (i.e. wiring) is quite costly, what would you propose in order to speed up the provided service while balancing the cost.

Answer 1

The service provided by cable ISP be still be superior to the one provided by the DSL providers because of the fact a single cable carries a large bandwidth for a large number of users and at a particular time there is no specific amount of users active like in the day when the number of users on the cable ISP is very less which means that the user that are using this service will get superior service as a number of users connected to the ISP is very less but in the peak hour the number of users connected is high and speed per user can degrade where DSL has a fixed amount of speed for every user because it is directly connected to every user.

Changes that would be suitable to bring in the DSL services would be that we should also be using the services like the cable ISP where are all the users are connected to a single cable and we should also do this in DSL services and we can make use of devices like router to limit the speed for every user to a certain value so that our DSL service does not perform like cable service.