T1 speed in comparison to...

[xedgex]

So I had a disagreement with someone at work the other day. I stated the fact that Cable data (8mbit) is faster than a full data T1.

When I ran a speed test on a T1 it came in well under the speeds of a provider of Cable.

Am I wrong? Is T1 faster than Cable, or DSL?

 

[brianinms]

A T1 is 1.5mb bidirectional, most cable connections are 6mb down and 256k up.

 

[xedgex]

So cable downstream is 4x faster than a T1, correct? but 1/6th of the upstream.

 

[Lundah]

The correct answer is "it depends". While the line rate (from the fiber node to your house) is faster, the actual available bandwidth will vary on many other factors; available bandwidth to the node, usage of other subscribers on the node, backbone speed to the head-end, etc. Not to mention the SLA differences; if cable goes down, you're sunk until they get around to fixing it, where with T1, you usually have SLA terms written into the contract (outages longer than "x" will result in credits, etc.).