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Originally Posted by Matth
You CANNOT compare contention ratios between dialup and cable - a 15:1 ratio on dialup is the ratio of user who could actually CONNECT, whereas on cable, it's bandwidth usage.
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With dialup there is 'contention' issue in terms of establishing a connection (how many recieving modems there are to a given number of cutomers) which is not comparable with BB as BB is an always on technology (ie there is a 1:1 ratio on establishing a connection). However in addition to this form of 'connection contention' with dial up there is also the 'normal' issues of 'bandwidth contention' which is comparable to dial ups. Whether this contetion with dial up mainfest itself from an ISP's central modem rack to it's external bandwith connection, or to the (more analgous to BB) senario with wholesale products like surftime and their ilk where the modems live in the exchange and then their is a contended pipe from the exchange back to the ISPs pop.
The point I was trying to make is that generally the faster the end users connection the higher you can run bandwidth contention (in any section of the connection). I will try and explain this a bit clearer (but probably fail).
If X is the amount a user downloads in a given time period and Y is the size of the users pipe as long as Y increases proportionaly greater than X then contention ratios can be higher without any noticable effects relative to the lower connection speeds and higher contention.
(PS guess who is currently reading "It must be beautiful - great equations of modern science)
