120M : Looks like Virgin are determined to flush out old modems

[Chrysalis]

yeah if the shared pipe is fat enough high contention ratios can be reached, of course some isp's abused this, when 50:1 was removed from the adsl spec (adsl max launch) it became apparent plusnet were contending at over 200:1 for a while and the result wasnt pretty

[Horizon]

Originally Posted by Sephiroth

That's what I think. All plus/minus of course.

Cheers.

[offmore]

Originally Posted by The PIT

They'd ask for it back mate.

I had a super hub replaced with super hub 2 due wireless dying, they sent me one for self installation and a letter in the box saying I send it back to freepost address in letter, there was no address on the letter , and phoned serveral times they said they would send me a bag to send it back which
never came so in the end I put in the box along with a old modem which was never taken away along with the router . and sent it (just added)freepost to address on box . which was for if parcel was undelivered.

that was only a couple of months ago, they did not seams bothered then about getting them the one time when I phoned I was told I could take them to a recycling centre

[Horizon]

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq

Depends on the area, not all areas have 16 channels, some may have more, some may have less. They stared with as low as 3 per area and have been adding more as and when required. AFAIK most should have at least 8 by now but that's not necessarily the case.

There's no hard limit that says they cannot deliver more than 16 channels through one node either.

Should also point out your extreme example is indeed an extreme example, uptake, population density, node size, and cabinet size all vary widely, one cabinet does not always equal one node, and finally, 3.6Mb per customer isn't actually all that bad.

Not long ago ISPs were selling to a contention ratio of about 50:1, meaning a "Up to 24Mbps" ADSL customer could be allocated only 0.5Mbps (or less). I recall once hearing of a certain ISP only allocating sufficient bandwidth for 64Kbps per customer at peak time. Consumer ISPs have always been overselling to those sorts of levels, on the basis that most people will not be using most their speed most of the time. That's how consumer broadband ended up being so cheap.

---------- Post added at 18:57 ---------- Previous post was at 18:48 ----------


IMO 50:1 contention ratios are just fine, especially on faster lines. Back where I used to work, we had around 2,200 student residences sharing 1000Mbps of capacity. And that never went above 30% load. Course, that was 2006...

Last I recall the average consumer used something around 50GB a month or less. On an average connection speed of 12Mbps, that's about 1.2% the capacity of their line. Assuming usage was evenly distributed throughout the month (which it isn't) then you'd only need 144 kbps per customer for everyone to get full speed. Even on VM where average speeds are over double that, 3.6Mbps is still over ten times the bare minimum in worst case scenario, supposedly. Which really isn't that bad.

Never said it was.

I was thinking about the Netflix news the other day saying they need 1.5MB to stream ultra hd. Well, if VM can deliver 3.6MB to everyone, well..., sorted!

Thanks for your comments too.

I should just add that out of those 75 channels of the 750Mhz of bandwidth, several of them are unusable due to interference issues and other things.

I'm really just trying to find out what VM can deliver today in terms of capacity and what they need to do for tomorrow. I keep reading that FTTC services will far outstrip VM soon in terms of capacity, but I'm not so sure.

If it were a choice between VM's cable network or Openreach/BT's network, I know which one I'd opt for which can deliver greater capacity without too much additional outlay.

[ferretuk]

Originally Posted by Horizon

I was thinking about the Netflix news the other day saying they need 1.5Mb* to stream ultra hd. Well, if VM can deliver 3.6Mb* to everyone, well..., sorted!

*units corrected for consistency with previous discussion

[OT comment]

You will be disappointed - Ultra HD will need around 15Mb/s

http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/N...15-Mbps-125924

[/OT comment]

[Kushan]

Agreed on contention ratios not being such a bad thing. If you want 100Mbit of uncontented bandwidth, be prepared to pay about £800 per month for it - and that's still cheap. The speeds we get for the price we pay are unrealistic for purely uncontented bandwidth. Yet as most people never max their connection, it's really not that big a deal. I believe Airlines do the same thing with plane tickets, as about 10% of passengers tend not to show up - hence why you occasionally get asked if you want to get the next flight instead or bumped up a class.

[qasdfdsaq]

It's not far off unlimited cinema tickets or railway season passes - the general assumption is not everyone will be using it all the time. Bus companies would go out of business if all season ticket holders were using the bus 24 hours a day...

Indeed, Netflix "ultra HD" or in my view, bog standard what-HD-should-have-been-right-from-the-beginning streams on average around 12Mbps and so saying you should have a 15Mbps connection isn't far off. That said the UK average isn't far off that either, so it won't be long before most people can stream the highest quality widely available stream, but still doesn't mean anywhere near everyone will be doing it simultaneously.