4 ms·

Isn't it still going to be a shared medium where you never actually achieve the advertised maximum speed?

by jpm_sd 3y ago

mdasen 3y ago
In the US, ISPs are usually pretty good about offering what they promise in terms of speeds. It is shared, but basically everything on the internet is shared. Even if you have fiber to your house, that fiber is ending up in a central office somewhere that then only has a certain amount of bandwidth to the rest of the internet. ISPs like Xfinity are splitting nodes so that you aren't sharing the link with many people before you're on fiber and oversell ratios are pretty well understood at this point (and apply to all ISPs whether the wire coming to your house is shared or it just becomes shared farther upstream). A municipal broadband network in my area has a 2Gbps connection to the wider internet and offers 1Gbps service to people's homes/businesses and that 2Gbps serves several hundreds. Clearly, not everyone could get gigabit service off that at the same time, but people's traffic is typically bursty. The internet itself is shared at different points even if the wire to your house isn't shared. If you have dedicated fiber running from the central office to your house and then the central office only has X Gbps to the rest of the internet, you're still on a shared link regardless of how dedicated things are between you and the central office.
- nexus7556 3y ago
  I'm on an oversaturated node. A field tech was able to confirm it for me after only being able to get about 800 down/25 up on my 1200/40 plan. I asked if they were planning on splitting it and they said they won't until they move the the new Harmonic nodes they're in the process of rolling out. Pretty frustrating.
- Dylan16807 3y ago
  > ISPs are usually pretty good about offering what they promise in terms of speeds One huge caveat to this is that many ISPs do not mention upload speed.

Isn't it still going to be a shared medium where you never actually achieve the advertised maximum speed?

by jpm_sd 3y ago

Isn't it still going to be a shared medium where you never actually achieve the advertised maximum speed?

In the US, ISPs are usually pretty good about offering what they promise in terms of speeds. It is shared, but basically everything on the internet is shared. Even if you have fiber to your house, that fiber is ending up in a central office somewhere that then only has a certain amount of bandwidth to the rest of the internet. ISPs like Xfinity are splitting nodes so that you aren't sharing the link with many people before you're on fiber and oversell ratios are pretty well understood at this point (and apply to all ISPs whether the wire coming to your house is shared or it just becomes shared farther upstream). A municipal broadband network in my area has a 2Gbps connection to the wider internet and offers 1Gbps service to people's homes/businesses and that 2Gbps serves several hundreds. Clearly, not everyone could get gigabit service off that at the same time, but people's traffic is typically bursty. The internet itself is shared at different points even if the wire to your house isn't shared. If you have dedicated fiber running from the central office to your house and then the central office only has X Gbps to the rest of the internet, you're still on a shared link regardless of how dedicated things are between you and the central office.

nexus7556 3y ago
I'm on an oversaturated node. A field tech was able to confirm it for me after only being able to get about 800 down/25 up on my 1200/40 plan. I asked if they were planning on splitting it and they said they won't until they move the the new Harmonic nodes they're in the process of rolling out. Pretty frustrating.
Dylan16807 3y ago
> ISPs are usually pretty good about offering what they promise in terms of speeds One huge caveat to this is that many ISPs do not mention upload speed.