On May 18, 2004, at 3:48 PM, Jeremy Portzer wrote:
On Tue, 2004-05-18 at 15:32, Stephen Hoffman wrote:I'm still feeling the service out, but so far I love it...The reason I
stayed with DSL was the dedicated bandwidth (I'll sacrifice speed for
consistancy).
The idea that DSL has "dedicated" bandwidth is one of the biggest myths of broadband Internet. Sure, the bandwidth is "dedicated" from the CO (Central Office) or DSLAM (DSL access module) for the "last mile" to your home or business. But it's not dedicated from there upstream! You're still sharing bandwidth with your neighbors, and anyone else at at your ISP, where the ISP connects to the Internet backbone! Plus, your DSL modem has significant bandwidth caps that negate how much of the backbone you can use anyway.
A cable modem connection shares the cable with your immediate neighbors;
usually a very small number like 10-15 (maybe slightly more in
apartments). But this doesn't matter, because the capacity of the cable
modems is high (55 Mbit or something). Your individual modem is limited
to a much smaller value (with TWC it's usually 3 Mbit down/384Kbit up).
So you're never going to be in contention with your neighbors anyway!
The fact is, cable modems offer much more bandwidth for the money
(standard DSL in this area is often 1.5 down/128kbit up -- Cable is
twice the download and three times the upload speed). Cable is usually
slightly less absolute cost than DSL ($41.95/mo. for Earthlink vs. 49.95
for full DSL service). Sure, both cable and DSL can become congested
during peak periods when the Internet *backbone* -- the ISP's upstream
connection -- becomes clogged. But you should NEVER have any problem
due to congestion in the "last mile" section, even though this is
technically "shared" in cable access. The shared access segment is
simply not a factor in your connection's speed or utility!
Jeremy is right on with this. I have RR service and when I was having problems I spent a long afternoon trouble shooting with one of their network engineers. He was checking port configurations and such. We were talking about bandwidth and such. According to this guy, if they have a hub that goes over 40% usage, they resegement.
The last mile won't be your bottleneck. The download speeds I get from RR's nntp servers are insane, even during peak hours.
Ken --------------------------------------------- "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."--Benjamin Franklin " 'Necessity' is the plea for every infringement of human liberty; it is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."--William Pitt
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