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Question of the Day: Do you get motion sick?
ADSL dedicated or shared bandwidth
- Thread starter zillah
- Start date
Dont take my word for this but from what i know it is dedicated *apart from International?* With it being shaped 
In the UK they had Cable and ADSL.
The problem with Cable i heard which i had. Was you shared bandwidth. Not a big difference however ....At peak times or if a lot using the Cable i found my speed from 120kb/s dropped to 75 kb/s. I never had crawling speeds though. I think with ADSL you get bandwidth all to yourself without having to share?
In the UK they had Cable and ADSL.
The problem with Cable i heard which i had. Was you shared bandwidth. Not a big difference however ....At peak times or if a lot using the Cable i found my speed from 120kb/s dropped to 75 kb/s. I never had crawling speeds though. I think with ADSL you get bandwidth all to yourself without having to share?
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Nope, ADSL works on contention ratio - sharing.. I'm not sure what it is in SA – probably something like 100:1. In the UK, BT had it on 20:1 but you can order a 1:1 line. In this case it's only yours, but this is mostly for companies as it's extremely expensive.Borgir said:Dont take my word for this but from what i know it is dedicated *apart from International?* With it being shaped
In the UK they had Cable and ADSL.
The problem with Cable i heard which i had. Was you shared bandwidth. Not a big difference however ....At peak times or if a lot using the Cable i found my speed from 120kb/s dropped to 75 kb/s. I never had crawling speeds though. I think with ADSL you get bandwidth all to yourself without having to share?
Learnt something new today 
To provide a cost effective sevice - all ADSL services are 'contended' (shared)>zillah said:
This contention is applied within the ISPs network - both locally with other users on your telephone exchange and within the ISPs network.
What this means in the 'worst case' is that you could be sharing a 500 Kbit/s connection with up to 19 other users (This is on a 20:1 contention). So if they were all using it at the same time 'theoretically' you would only get 25 Kbit/s (not very fast at all)
However, 'in reality' this scenario is very unlikely
If you are not getting the speed you expect it can be due to the contention ratio but also the quality and length of your telephone line from the local exchange.
All ADSL lines – regardless of service provider - are subject to contention, meaning that the network bandwidth available is shared between a number of subscribers. The ratio to which the available bandwidth is shared between users is called the "contention ratio". All UK providers, including BT, are subject to the same contention ratios. Services targeted at casual home users are frequently cheaper, but have a higher contention ratio. This means that the available network capacity is shared between a greater number of users. Business services have a lower contention ratio, which will provide a more consistent level of performance. A 50 to 1 contention ration means the bandwidth may be shared with up to 50 other subscribers, whereas a 20 to 1 contention ration means the bandwidth may be shared with no more than 20 other subscribers.
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