Vodacom ADSL here in weeks

[vodacom3g]

BTW, there is zero contention on the copper pairs between a customer's ADSL modem|router and the corresponding DSLAM Port Card.

True, so you could remove it from the final number. Obviously the last mile in 3G is contended. And at an instantaneous unknown ratio. Obviously you can build up a number over time.

 

[Roman4604]

Do you know if they quote the number on specific links, specific areas of the network (say local traffic) or user end-to-end experience, i.e from client to server?

To my knowledge the contention is not calculated at the IP layer but rather at the ATM layer, therefore it its way before any notion of local or international IP bandwidth. I'm also not sure if its calculated on a per DSLAM, per exchange or amalgamation of all exchanges, but I would guess for public quoting purposes it would be the latter.

So for example, the largest exchange in the country is Benmore (Sandton) with just over 5200 active ports. If one assumes the average port speed on the DSLAMs is 512Kbps, then that would be 2.54 Gbps of customer capacity being provided and I would expect Telkom to provision ATM PVCs with the combined capacity of 130 Mbps (1/20th) to their ESRs for their contention claims to be valid.

Once past the ESR (pure routed IP) all bets are off and all sorts of other points of contentention come into play e.g. national transit links, SAT3 capacity etc. but these fall outside their 'access' contention specification.

Question is, does it actually mean anything useful to the person doing the browsing?

No it can only be an indicator, however in the absence of this parameter your only other comparison method would be actual physical performance testing. Maybe a job for the SABS?

I see an interesting discussion in the near future . I give you a shout when I'm back in Jozy

That would be great.

 

[vodacom3g]

Maybe a job for the SABS?

Or MyADSL!

 

[DavidJ]

To answer DavidJ's question the price (673Mbps/month) is for the bandwidth. This translates in a monthly capacity of around 218 000 TB/month!

I understood that, I wasn't really asking a 'question' and ic for some reason decided to go all semantic on me, I obviously meant the "usage" usage of the word "bandwidth" as it is commonly used in everyday speech, not the technical (non-RF, computer networking) meaning where it would actually refer to "capacity" (I *know* the difference, thank you). Anyway, obviously I wasn't clear (sorry, was half asleep when I wrote the comment), what I really meant was, you are renting the link (with some given bandwidth/capacity) for that price, but don't you still need to pay UPSTREAM providers a separate fee if you actually want to connect to the Internet and transfer actual data in the 'real world'? (As opposed to, you know, just creating your own little global private network.) I was responding to someone who was comparing this price directly to other Internet access prices (at least, that was my interpretation). I am presuming that R670/mo odd doesn't include pure unfettered Internet transfers at sustained 1Mbps / 218000TB/mo, and that the actual cost of such would be far higher (likewise for whatever else one might want to do with the link, e.g. route phone calls or whatever). The link is useless by itself - no?

 

[ld13]

Vodacom ADSL here in [-]weeks[/-] months

*fixed*

Seems like thats a more reachable 'target' for VC

 

[Alchemist]

ld13, I'd completely forgotten all about this.

But wasn't their initial service targeting business? RPM, are their any figures available for how many businesses are connect via Vodacom?