gabriel rosenkoetter on Sun, 10 Feb 2002 17:33:13 -0500


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Re: [PLUG] DSL "guaranteed" speed


On Sun, Feb 10, 2002 at 10:00:47AM -0500, Jon Galt wrote:
>   I have seen people refer to DSL as having guaranteed bandwidth, as
> compared to cable, which is essentially a neighborhood ethernet.  So the
> question is, do I really have guaranteed bandwidth? Perhaps it was only
> that lots of people use the internet on friday afternoons/evenings?

Think about this way:

  Cable is like having a neighborhood network running through a hub.
  DSL is like having a neighborhood network running through a switch.

You *will* hit bottlenecks in both, but the number of people on your
block with DSL doesn't degrade your service noticeably. (The number
of Speakeasy clients on the Philly CO could eventually choke me
up... but it hasn't so far, and Speakeasy's quite responsive. DCAnet
seems to be very similar.)

With cable, when your neighbor gets a cable modem, your bandwidth is
effectively halved any time both of you are on. And so forth. (Um,
that's an exageration, actually, but I think you see my point.)

-- 
gabriel rosenkoetter
gr@eclipsed.net

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