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Ignition · 17-09-2003, 11:43

It's absolutely to do with DOCSIS. At current cap on 600k service and 150k, in some areas there is more upstream traffic than downstream, in the majority of areas it's no better than 2:1 ratio in favour of downstream.

Remember that on ADSL you connect to a DSLAM and the only limitation to symettrical connections is the signal quality to your home rather than bandwidth at the exchange, which is symettrical. The current version of DOCSIS doesn't have any provision for this, and ratio of total bandwidth available is about 2:1 downstream to upstream. There are things that can be done to improve this slightly however these require considerable work and expense (not to say it won't be done at some point tho!)

To be honest that's the main reason. Remember home connections weren't originally conceived to be hosting games or, more pertinently, be uploading 100% of the time on p2p networks. Supplying a 256k upstream on 600k service would increase upstream congestion hugely which would then result in loads of upgrades having to be done, which have to be paid for by Mr customer at the end of the day.

Upstream usage is already massively disproportionate to downstream use without doing the above. That would badly skew it even more.

There's your choice really. 256k would be simple to supply, but the extreme congestion, and packet loss + latency ensuing from this, really wouldn't be worth it, would it?

Hope that explains things. Not a question of ntl: being mean just that at current usage levels it would be a bad idea.

The trial BBKing was referring to I vaguely remember, was a 'silver-plus' service. Not sure what the feedback was, but going by the fact nothing has been heard about it since it can't have been good.

17-09-2003, 11:43	#5
Ignition Permanently Banned Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: South-East London Age: 48 Services: Depends who's being serviced :p Posts: 2,588	It's absolutely to do with DOCSIS. At current cap on 600k service and 150k, in some areas there is more upstream traffic than downstream, in the majority of areas it's no better than 2:1 ratio in favour of downstream. Remember that on ADSL you connect to a DSLAM and the only limitation to symettrical connections is the signal quality to your home rather than bandwidth at the exchange, which is symettrical. The current version of DOCSIS doesn't have any provision for this, and ratio of total bandwidth available is about 2:1 downstream to upstream. There are things that can be done to improve this slightly however these require considerable work and expense (not to say it won't be done at some point tho!) To be honest that's the main reason. Remember home connections weren't originally conceived to be hosting games or, more pertinently, be uploading 100% of the time on p2p networks. Supplying a 256k upstream on 600k service would increase upstream congestion hugely which would then result in loads of upgrades having to be done, which have to be paid for by Mr customer at the end of the day. Upstream usage is already massively disproportionate to downstream use without doing the above. That would badly skew it even more. There's your choice really. 256k would be simple to supply, but the extreme congestion, and packet loss + latency ensuing from this, really wouldn't be worth it, would it? Hope that explains things. Not a question of ntl: being mean just that at current usage levels it would be a bad idea. The trial BBKing was referring to I vaguely remember, was a 'silver-plus' service. Not sure what the feedback was, but going by the fact nothing has been heard about it since it can't have been good.