Question on IBB restricting their service

dogpile

Have Ripwave a few months, when first installed for a few few hours I was getting download speeds of around 700kp/s on speedtest which I reckon is about right for a 1meg connection...never since have I got these speeds usually getting around 450kp/s on a supposed 2meg connection(and that's a good day)...last week I was penalized for over usage and was getting restricted usage of around 100kps or so downloads


the thought occurred to me since they can purposely throttle speeds, would or can they restrict the speed of the service normally and to what advantage would they do this?? (remember I've seen the speeds capable when first installed)

Dannyboy83

Going to over-simply this:

If the well in your village has 50litres water per day and only 10 houses in the village has plumbing - every house gets 5 litres per day.

If the amount of houses with plumbing increases to 100, and nobody ever bothers to upgrade the well, instead seeking to maximise profit, there is now only a half litre per house available for day, despite you paying the same amount.

You need to check the contention ratio.



Most broadband access services share a single connection path between many customers - this is referred to as contention. A contention ratio of 40:1 means that up to 40 customers are sharing the same connection. When usage is light, contention does not pose a problem. However, the quality of the connection can deteriorate if many customers use the connection at the same time. For example, if all 40 users are using a 512kbps broadband service at the same time, your access speed is reduced to about 13ksps. In reality, this rarely occurs and is unlikely to significantly impact on your home and internet use, but you should be aware that peak usage times can seem slower because of network congestion. Most of the time, you should be able to connect to 75% - 90% of the top speed available at your location.
When signing up for a broadband service, service providers will quote the contention rate for the service being provided. Contention is an issue with services such as ADSL, satellite and wireless broadband access. Since guaranteed fast broadband access is often more critical to a business, many SMEs consider buying a broadband service with a low contention ratio.

dogpile

Get what you're saying but if they can throttle speeds on tap to almost a quarter for over usage what's to stop then doing the same for normal usage without anyone knowing?? contention ratio could be a red herring!! for a 2meg connection I should be getting way more than 400bs/s or so

watty

Not on Ripwave.

hobochris

dogpile wrote: »

Get what you're saying but if they can throttle speeds on tap to almost a quarter for over usage what's to stop then doing the same for normal usage without anyone knowing?? contention ratio could be a red herring!! for a 2meg connection I should be getting way more than 400bs/s or so

the Answer is simple, NOTHING.

In fact Isp's have been known to put heavy users in whats known as a pipe. Where they all contend against each other for speed.

for a 2 meg connection you'd be lucky if you got more then 250kB/s. In fact with contention taken into account 170-180k would be about right.