best internet/cable tv options in prospect heights

For a price, Cablevision has the fastest internet service available in the US (100mbps).

If you have that and know how to use it there's no need for cable TV.

As previously mentioned, you're not going to have a choice in terms of cable providers - in PH, it's Cablevision. Also, unless something has changed recently, their regular service sucks wookie balls - at the peak usage times (when people get home from work at the end of the day) download speeds suffer dramatically (Netflix Watch Instantly was often unusable) and on occasion upload speeds were... well, nonexistent - I found myself timing out at secure sites that needed verification (nothing like adding stress to online bill paying). Long story short - for an additional 10 or 15 bucks, you can jump on their Boost service - not as many users, not prone to bogging down.

Even though 4g hotspots are comparable to DSL or slow cable in terms of theoretical throughput, the high latency of wireless is going to hurt you.

I wouldn't recommend it unless you actually do plan to bring it with you and don't much care about performance.

You don't know how wireless works, do you? There's no line, but you're still sharing the frequency. That's what causes the latency.

Average download speeds on Sprint LTE are 2mbps, upload around 600kbps. That puts it in line with DSL and with some of the slower cable offerings.

Your average latency is going to be 200ms, about 10x that of DSL or cable, and you'd have to be staggeringly patient and inattentive to not notice it. Every HTTP object on a web page will take at a minimum 180ms longer to load, and a typical web page is comprised of dozens of objects. Do the math.

Your maximum throughput also goes down with higher latency, all else being equal. With a typical 64k window size (maximum on Windows computers without additional tuning) you will not be able to get more than about 2500kbps @ 200ms latency, whereas at 20ms your maximum is 10x that at 25,000kbps. The reasons for that have to do with how the TCP protocol which most of the internet runs on operates.

Of course, you're not likely to hit this limit on an LTE network often as your average speed is going to be below it.

I'm glad LTE suits your needs. I'm just saying that the performance is not comparable, even if your throughput is above the average. (To be fair, 2mbps is apparently the national average, and in the NYC area it's more frequently between 4-5mbps).

I could not live with latency that high -- 80ms is a round-trip to London; in 150ms you're out to Bangalore and back. It will absolutely slow down every internet activity you're doing. I'm skeptical that you're seeing real-world speeds of 12-14mbps with latency that high, unless you've tuned your network stack to deal with it. At your best-case 80ms latency, peak throughput without TCP window scaling (the default on Windows, unless you do some registry hacking) is 6.5mbps, at 150ms it's just a wee more than half that.

BTW, 800kbps is _very_ slow DSL, pretty much the cheapest you can get. Verizon DSL will go up to 7.5mbps I believe, depending on how close you are to the CO and how much you're willing to pay. Unlike cable and wireless, DSL is a dedicated line. You may still experience congestion further upstream, but you won't get it on your broadcast network the way you will with wireless and cable. So it still conveys some advantages...

lol not gonna make a defrence latency is about 80-120ms just did alot of speed test lol. haven't done one in a while.

fios isn't available in all parts of PH though.

I know its theoretical . i just curious to see my latency was. haven't done one in a while. Real life dl, is more important to me anyway.