I'd say DSL is the way to go. I've got DSL and I have had next to no downtime over the last year or so. Friend of mine with @Home keeps losing email every other weekend or so.
The other advantage of DSL is that the bandwith is all yours. While it's dependant on your distance from the Central Office (closer is better), you don't share the bandwith with other DSL users in your neighbourhood. Depending on the time and the server I'm connecting to I can get download speeds from between 100-115KB/sec. Upload speed is capped at a crappy 14KB/sec, but unless you're uploading huge files to a webpage it's more then ok.
Costwise it's a toss up, in my area it's about $39.95/month (Cdn) for either service.
We're running PPPoE for getting IP addresses assigned. It's a bit of a hassle compared to the DHCP server that used to assign IP's, but there are benefits. You get a new address each time, so no one hardcoding an IP can lock you out. You don't have the DHCP server going down and preventing you from getting an IP. It adds a bit of overhead to the packets but not enough to be noticable.
Don't forget to grab a program to tweak your network settings, since they're defaulted to values for dial up modems, changing them will allow higher speeds. The one I like is
PPP Boost. Nice and simple. The values I've set are
MaxMTU=1480
RWIN=32120 and TTL=64.
let me know if you want any more info.
Rick
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Celeron
[email protected] 2.25v, Asus P3V4X, 128mb Crucial PC133
Matrox G400 32mb DH, Maxtor 10.2GB, Fujistu 4.2GB, Creative 24x, SB Live X-Gamer, D-Link NIC
