Contention Ratios

I wonder if anybody knows what is the reality around Contention Ratios ?
ASre they actually applied ?

Where suppliers actually quote them they seem to vary from 40 or 50:1
(cheaper end consumer offering) to 8 or 4:1 ( Business offerings at higher
prices, wholesalers).

With the likes of BT upping their retail offer to 1mb or 2mb for the recent
price of 512 then the higher price offerings are falling out of step
(particularly the wholesalers) UNLESS you believe, and factor in, the guff
about contention ratios.

John

--
John Owens
www.goodviews.co.uk
Fax +44 1509 890822




John Owens

On Fri, 6 May 2005 13:24:30 +0100, "John Owens"
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>I wonder if anybody knows what is the reality around Contention Ratios ?
>ASre they actually applied ?

contention ratios are aplied but almost certainly not to the maximim.

>Where suppliers actually quote them they seem to vary from 40 or 50:1
>(cheaper end consumer offering) to 8 or 4:1 ( Business offerings at higher
>prices, wholesalers).

BT have standard wholesale IPStream products contended at *up to* 50:1
for home and *up to* 20:1 for business. The practical reality 12
months ago was that 15:1 was the prevailing contention ratio (defined
as capacity of end user accounts sold divided by instaled capacity of
ISP links).

Bulldog, Homechoice, Easynet, UKOnline do their own LLU kit in
exchanges and can manage it how they see fit.

Similarly BT provide "Datastream" circuits where ISPs control the
contention on theri own link to the exchange. Demon for example use
this to provide 1:1 and 5:1 contention circuits to businesses.

Datastream is also used by NTL/Tesco/Virgin, Tiscali, EFH, CPBB and
others for Home products where user experience suggests they do run
the circuits up towards the stated 50:1 ratio and hence users see slow
speeds at times.

You only "see" contention when there is too much - 30:1 contention of
light users web browsing probably never affects any of them , but one
Dalek downloading the internet on the same circuit could have an
impact on everybody.

Phil
Tiscali - dialup speeds at Broadband prices :-)

--

On 07 May 2005 09:25, Phil Thompson wrote:

>one Dalek downloading the internet on the same circuit

LOL ! Yes, a nice image to use - shame if discussing internet usage
with people abroad it will be years until they see that, I'd guess.

Peter M wrote:
> On 07 May 2005 09:25, Phil Thompson wrote:
>
>
>>one Dalek downloading the internet on the same circuit
>
>
> LOL ! Yes, a nice image to use - shame if discussing internet usage
> with people abroad it will be years until they see that, I'd guess.

I don't know - my dalek brother in law in the US has already downloaded
the dalek downloading the Internet.