I think most guys have not understood how the entire system works - whether its ISP offering internet speeds, or a mobile operator or airlines/hotel, or even your LAN network - its oversubscription. It's a simple concept - you look at typical vs peak usage.
If you are a ISP - you may have a high speed line of say 100 Mbps. With this, you can service around 100 connections at 1 Mbps each. However, on average, you will notice that most connections are utilized to the tune of 20-30% only. So, you have usually 70-80% capacity free on average. So, you oversubscribe and sell instead of 100 connections, say about 200 connections. This way, you double your sales without increasing your cost. Most ISPs now, do a combination of local peering + transparent squid caching + torrent caching to benefit - but these are usually Tier 3 ISPs like your cable operator.
Similarly, your mobile operator does not build towers with capacity to serve 100% calls, but the average. That's why during heavy usage like calamities, the networks fail.
The airlines/hotel operators do the same and assume people will cancel. They will pocket the termination charge as well.
Coming to a live scenario - your home or office local network, assume each device can pull 30 Mbps over WiFi and 100 Mbps over LAN, do you ensure your local server has 30x and 100x the speeds? It will peak at 100 Mbps/1Gbps/10Gbps (rare). If each device starts pulling data, then the network speeds go for a toss. Or look at WiFi - you don't get the most fastest WiFi AP even if you have several WiFi devices.
My point for mentioning this is that we have seen a spate of new operators who are providing 5/10/20/100 Mbps at cheap rates. Is it viable? Maybe. Is it viable if everyone starts downloading like crazy? Nopes. Thats why the terms will say upto X Mbps. And in many cases, FUPed.
Another point is about reduced upload speeds - ISPs offer lower upload vs download speeds on most plans for two main reasons - they keep the upload speeds for business users who might host things and to ensure that you can host anything with good speeds - because then you won't take a business plan. For most end users, they hardly upload stuff, except the occasional image/attachment/backup/etc, so it does not matter.
I have a feeling this should be made into a new thread in the ISP section - Maybe how they work?
If you are a ISP - you may have a high speed line of say 100 Mbps. With this, you can service around 100 connections at 1 Mbps each. However, on average, you will notice that most connections are utilized to the tune of 20-30% only. So, you have usually 70-80% capacity free on average. So, you oversubscribe and sell instead of 100 connections, say about 200 connections. This way, you double your sales without increasing your cost. Most ISPs now, do a combination of local peering + transparent squid caching + torrent caching to benefit - but these are usually Tier 3 ISPs like your cable operator.
Similarly, your mobile operator does not build towers with capacity to serve 100% calls, but the average. That's why during heavy usage like calamities, the networks fail.
The airlines/hotel operators do the same and assume people will cancel. They will pocket the termination charge as well.
Coming to a live scenario - your home or office local network, assume each device can pull 30 Mbps over WiFi and 100 Mbps over LAN, do you ensure your local server has 30x and 100x the speeds? It will peak at 100 Mbps/1Gbps/10Gbps (rare). If each device starts pulling data, then the network speeds go for a toss. Or look at WiFi - you don't get the most fastest WiFi AP even if you have several WiFi devices.
My point for mentioning this is that we have seen a spate of new operators who are providing 5/10/20/100 Mbps at cheap rates. Is it viable? Maybe. Is it viable if everyone starts downloading like crazy? Nopes. Thats why the terms will say upto X Mbps. And in many cases, FUPed.
Another point is about reduced upload speeds - ISPs offer lower upload vs download speeds on most plans for two main reasons - they keep the upload speeds for business users who might host things and to ensure that you can host anything with good speeds - because then you won't take a business plan. For most end users, they hardly upload stuff, except the occasional image/attachment/backup/etc, so it does not matter.
I have a feeling this should be made into a new thread in the ISP section - Maybe how they work?
