Wisp with "Burstable" bandwidth

[Piesang]

What does this mean??? Got it in a e-mail from my WISP (Wireless Online)

"Including a "burstable" bandwidth dimension to existing packages. Allowing all our customers to surf the Net at double their original package speed."

I have a 192k package. Supposed to download at 24kB/s. With "burst" according to them I'm supposed to double the speed. That means 48kB/s. I only get 16kB/s.

What's the use of "burstable".

 

[stoke]

Normally - burstable is a term used to describe the reserving of extra bandwidth for just incase you may need it.

<Q>Burstable bandwidth is the flexible alternative to dedicated bandwidth. Since it is cost-efficient for the hoster and hostee, many shared hosting plans use burstable bandwidth.</Q>

In this case it's probably the ability of a wireless network with spare capacity to provide you with extra bandwidth because the network is not currently heavily loaded. If the network becomes heavily loaded, you'll loose that extra "burst" of bandwidth.

i.e. They can allocate a certain amount of extra bandwidth to you at quiet times but you cannot rely on this bandwidth to be there during busy times.

 

[Piesang]

I think maybe Wireless Online reserved 1kB/s extra for me becaue I seem to get 17kB/s now

I would say 24kB/s download is fine for me, because that is what I pay for. But no, I get 16kB/s. So I pay R150 more than I'm suppose to.

 

[Eben]

the "burstable" bandwidth only works for a certain amount of time - say for instance 1sec which mean that it will only effect your browsing speed and not ur downloading speed that much or at all

 

[skydog]

Depending on their defination of brustable it may mean that if you don't download anything then start downloading it will burst to a certain speed and then drop down to the normal rate again until you stop downloading for a while. The tank will fill up and then you get another brust when you start downloading again.

The other thing it could be is some marketing ploy..... in other words "If you visit a website that is already cached on our proxy server you will get i far faster as we have very limited international bandwidth. This is the wonderful new technology of brusting."

 

[Eben]

true

 

[Piesang]

Ok, that's why when I start downloading a file it sometimes start at around about 60kB/s for a few seconds and then go down to normal downloading speeds.

 

[Coza]

They Probably use sqiud delay pools which give you a higher thrughput until the file or traffic reaches a pre-defined size, where it will then drop down to a limited speed.
This preserves bandwidth for other users. so small files/email etc will burst to the max speed available. Until it figures out that you are hogging bandwidth.

 

[Piesang]

Ja, but thats bulls$#t. I pay for 24kB/s. So when they find out I'm "hogging bandwidth" they make my connection slower. Thats not right. Then they can just as well give me a lower package and I pay less than paying for something I can't use.