As a student, it is important that you have access to the best internet connection available to you. Research is, in itself, a time consuming and painstaking process and it is only made more difficult by stone aged download speeds.

In most cases, you will be choosing between DSL and cable Broadband connection, and it is important, for the sake of your work and your sanity, that you pick the right one. While cable is technically supposed to be faster, it is often slowed up by the number of users accessing the internet at any one time.

Unlike cable, DSL is not limited in this way. Rather than sharing one line that becomes bogged down and blocked if too many users connect at the same moment, each DSL user is assigned his or her own line, and this often means that DSL connections are, in practice, faster.

However, while cable connections come off badly in this particular light, DSL is not without problems of its own. DSL broadband connections depend, to a great extent, on their proximity to a remote terminal or telephone station. In rural areas, where a signal is weak, the DSL connection is likely to be unreliable and difficult.

In this sense, cable is the more reliable option. However, as a student, it is more than likely the case that you live in an urban area where DSL connections are strong and reliable. Because student areas are also packed with internet users that slow up the cable network, DSL is usually the better option.