@wash, I dont work for an ISP but this is my understanding of the business. On 5/22/12 8:48 PM, Odhiambo Washington wrote:
@Brian,
Do you think there is an ISP in the world that can guarantee a client a uniform bandwidth between the client's CPE and every destination in the world? Hse -- 1Mbps -- ISP ---1Mbps -- ANY DESTINATION
If you were offered this product (what they referred to as a dedicated service) it would cost more than you are paying for your current contended service.
I think what you are talking about is impossible. However, they can work out something that roughly averages what they sell to clients who pay for CIR (I don't recall well the term)... they have a formular....
Contention ratios vary from one provider to another. Some countries like the UK have some defined contention ratios on DSL/broadband services. For Businesses contention ratios are 20:1 For home users contention rations are 50:1 Of course the business people pay more than home users. This is how the usage works out. During the day the bandwidth is primarily used by the corporate world and at night, when the corporate world transitions to their homes, they use the same capacity. So the ISPs are able to resell the same capacity 24hrs in a day to maximize on their returns.
I know they can guarantee bandwidth on point2point links, which you can easily test using an applications like iperf/jperf running on hosts at the two points, not point2multipoint (where multipoint is Int'l)
What you may want to find out your providers contention ratio. Bear in mind that any carrier or transit provider also has contention ratios. I have seen carriers that do a ratio of 2:1 for instance every 10Gbps they buy the expect to make sales of 20Gbps, etc. Hope that helps. Regards, Michuki.