The cable modem, in nine cases out of ten, is unable to reestablish the connection on its own. Since this particular model has no power switch, this requires me to get up and either unplug the modem from the adapter or unplug the adapter from the outlet and wait 10-20 seconds. Once I plug the modem back in and it reestablishes a connection, if I'm lucky, Windows will request a new IP address and I'm back online.
Unfortunately, more often the case is that Windows can't do that. Which requires me to either hunt down the "WINIPCFG" program and click "Release All" and then "Renew All", or I have to reboot the machine.
With the Verizon DSL, this is even worse, because if I lose the connection with that modem, no amount of toggling the on-off switch will get the connection back. Then I'd have to wait.
And after I go through all of that, if I was in any realtime chat rooms (IRC, IM), I have to somehow show despite the appearance otherwise, I wasn't online therefore I wasn't able to receive any messages. (It's almost like proving a negative!)
It goes double for Old Bessie who has fits of sluggishness which appears to be freezes, but really are her attempts to digest a particular complex computational task (like Virus scanning, faxing a paper, running MS Word).
I'm not even sure it is the hassle to bother with this real time thing. You don't have any of these mishaps with regular voice communications over the telephone!