[mean81GT]

Every says that cable slows down as more people get on. true and false. while it is true that the bandwidth is shared among users within a certain node, cable complanies throttle your performance so that you never notice a difference. For example, if your cable company is using a 6 MHz channel for the downstream carrier, and is using 64 QAM modulation (the most common), your modem is capable of approx 30 mbps download. on the upstream, it is commonly QPSK, and is capable of 10 mbps. now, what the cable companies do is they limit you toa vertain spoeed, say for instance 10 mbps download. this way, they have 20 mbps to take for the other people coming on, and you never notice it. dsl gives you everything up front, and as was said before, your connection IS shared, and your speed drops dramatically as the other people use the connection. also, for evenly matched DSL vs. cable, which doesn't ever happen, the dsl is twice as expensive. if you have any questions about cable modems or dsl, email me. i know it all (it's what i do). also, they are both service providers, as is standard dial up, but aol is different as it gives you it's own OS. you use netscape or IE for the other two. you can keep aol, and pay 9.95 per month.