It all comes down to your local ISP's and their respective offers imo.

Cable's (Symmetric system) main advantage is that upload speed does not affect download speed whereas with an ADSL (Asymmetric system) connection you virtually cannot upload at the same time you download without having the latter's speed drop down 75% or so.

But on the other hand ADSL is usually cheaper (slightly - in some places, no clue about UK). So if u think budget wise and dont give a flying f about downloading and uploading at the same time, then ADSL looks the right choice. (more widespread/easier to get than Cable usually)

Detailed explanation of this here:

http://www.broadbandinfo.com/internet-access/speed-test/upload-download-speed.html

Imo ask around the UK-based users of this site and do not forget to enquire about the respective ISP's reliability and network stability as some lure yo uwith amazing "supposed" speeds and prices and at the end of the day you get jack shit of what they promised you.

I have virgin media, continued from our old Blueyonder service, and I have to say, it's a pile of shit. We pay for 20mb broadband (cable) but in reterospect we are getting around 6mb. It's a total waste of money, and my bro who lives just a few miles away is with the same company, paying for 4mb, and receiving 20mb speeds....it really is stupid how the company is set up, not much care into customer satisfaction and the help lines charge you £1 a minute, so even complaining costs you. I guess this is what happens when your company gets taken over by a billionaire that doesnt give a shit about what he's actually doing, only what his bank balance is. Fuck Richard Branson.

also, they are total assholes for doing this

Bandwidth throttling

The cable broadband services do not have a specific bandwidth cap; however, on 3 May 2007 Virgin introduced "Subscriber Traffic Management" (STM). In particular, between the hours of 4pm and midnight the service provider may throttle down bandwidth for customers "downloading an unusually large amount at these times" (in line with one's package: 350 MB for the 2 Mb/sec package, 750 MB for the 4 Mb/sec package and 3 GB for the 10/20 Mb/sec package) such that the speed of one's connection will decrease. According to Virgin Media, this schema aims to regulate bandwidth-usage and to ensure that all customers get a fair share of the service provided.

after all that though, once you have paid over the odds to get connected, you get pings of around 50ms on central european servers, and 100+ on spanish&polish. I really do NOT know why my parents are still with them, but they are, cos they're noobs.

PS If theres someone else in UK that has gets a good service, let me know also, because i would really like to persuade my parents to change it

Im on cable,and I can give u a few tips.

Cable is in general better for gaming,ping is lower and ADSL will never match it if u compare them on the same speeds.I disagree that upload doesnt affect DL on cable,it does,at least on my ISP.Theory is one thing,but practice is something completely different.I had 64k in beginning and later 128k,256 kbps and I always had better ping then some ppl who had 1 or 2 MBit connections but were on ADSL.ADSL is asynchronous and goes thru satellite,one part,for both connections their names practicly say it all Cable is only cables,no satellite,thats why ping is better.

Future is now fiber optic with symetric DL/UL ratio like rena said,if u can get that,go for it.If its available in my city,then hell,it should be available in the UK If u cant get it,get cable.Ofc u r aware that its possible that when u have problems with ur connection your co-ISP-sufferers are experiencing no probs whatsoever.Thats why its very wise to switch to an ISP where there are a few ppl from e+ on,so u can always check if problems effect everyone or just u,when they pop up.

Hi Wax, my post won't help you, but I thought it could be quite interesting for others, even for germans.

wrote:

ADSL is asynchronous and goes thru satellite,one part,for both connections their names practicly say it all Cable is only cables,no satellite,thats why ping is better.

Hm, seems that this again depends very strong on your country.

I'm on ADSL which doesn't go thru satellite. It's coming in my house, as in most other households as well, via the telephone cable. For 1 euro a month I even could make my ADSL ping lower than yours, Ratz.

German ADSL means:

"Frequency Division Multiplex Access" (FDMA) = analog telephony
"Echo Cancellation" = digital telephony (ISDN)

I have some good pictures here, unfortunately only in my books. Basically this pictures would tell you, that on FDMA telephony, upstream and downstream have their own freuquency ranges. Therefore they should not influence each other. On ISDN (130kHz compared to 4kHz on analog telephony) there is much less space for broadband applications which explains that download and upload range share (partly) a common frequency. -> They affect each other.

But there is much more than just ADSL available here. Ratz what you meant is called skyDSL in Germany. Here is a short list with the different DSL options and their maximum transfer rates (Download (dl) and Upload (ul) in MBit/s):

HDSL, sym, dl:2048, ul:2048, 3pair of conductors

SDSL, sym, dl:2,6 ul;3,6, 2pair of conductors

ADSL, asym, dl:7 ul;0,8, 1pair of conductors (most ppl here have this, but not all of them can get the 8Mbit's downstream version)

ADSL2, asym, dl:8, ul;1, 1pair of (rural population can't get this but it's available in most cities)

ADSL2+ asym, dl:24,ul:1, 1pair of conductors (rural population can't get this but it's available in most cities)

VDSL, sym & asym, dl sym: 50, dl asym: 100, ul sym: 50 ul asym: 10, 1pair of conductors (mostly used by companies with good location; connected via fiber optic to the backbone net of the ISP)

VDSL2, sym & asym, dl sym: 100, dl asym: 200, ul sym: 100 ul asym: 20, 1pair of conductors

Ah, I forgot:

About this lower ping thingy...
The most popular ISP here which offers ADSL also offers something called "fastpath". I don't have it coz my ping is ok on most servers. But some of my friends who are playing CS (seems, that it is more important there) ordered it.
Basically you can say that fastpath halves your ping by reducing the latency of your ADSL connection. It disables "Interleaving", a control mechanism that checks for data errors. That, in a nutshell, is how fastpath works.