[NCLUG] Re: DSL Throttling or General Congestion?

[Michael Milligan]

Jim Hutchinson wrote:
> What do you mean by shared-access?

The Internet is shared.  Cable and DSL just have different connection 
points where the shared part starts.  For DSL, it's at the DSLAM in the 
local CO (or mini-CO) down the street.  For Cable, it's the little 
router box sitting in your house.  Same difference in the end.

Throughput (effective bandwidth) and latency -- what you really care 
about as a customer -- is a different story however.  John touched on 
contention, which affects both of these measures of your actual service 
level.  Large corporations buy "bandwidth" with SLAs (Service Level 
Agreements) that specify minimums (bandwidth) and maximums (latency, 
jitter).  Until consumers start demanding the same, we'll continue to 
get "crappy" service.

I constantly hear people complaining about "this DSL provider in my area 
sucks, I'm switching to cable" and then a couple months later "cable in 
my area sucks, I'm switching back to DSL because it didn't suck as bad".

Regards,
Mike

-- 
Michael Milligan                                   -> milli at acmeps.com
Acme Professional Services LLC                        970-581-9948