Re: Can someone explain contention?

On Wed, 28 Sep 2005 21:46:45 GMT, "Cullen Skink"
<newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>When a broadband service says they have a contention ratio of say 50:1
>what is it that the 50 customers are sharing? If all 50 customers are on
>the ISP's 512kbps service they can't be sharing a single 512kbps
>connection as you would notice slow down all the time. I'm guessing it
>is a much larger "pipe?"
>
>tia

It's a bit like trying to explain how 5,000,000 cars can use the UK
road network at the same time without any of them dropping their
average speed below 40mph ... apart from isolated areas where the
average speed might drop to 10mph or so.

Does that help?

Jake
.

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