Average internet contention

[Lester]

This might seem like a daft question - but maybe someone with ISP experience can put forward a guestimate.

You can buy an uncontended connection to the internet but my argument would be that the internet as a whole is contended in any case so there's little point - apart from benefitting if you have multiple users at your end. Specifice sites and routes will be busier than others of course, but does anyone have any idea how contended the internet is on average? There must be some figures or stats for average daytime and nighttime use? I suppose it also depends on your ISPs route to Telehouse etc and their peering arrangements? No matter what pipe you buy, someone, somewhere is contending you.

The idea, I guess, would be to purchase a pipe that is the same as, or lower than, the expected internet contention, so as not to be the "weakest link" so to speak.

 

[tRoG]

If you purchase a line with a 50:1 contention, then you'd be sharing your lot with 50 other people, and whomever is trying to access whatever is you're accessing?

So surely by buying something with no contention, you'll only be sharing with, eg. All FH users, when posting here, instead of 50 other people and then all the FH users.

Or, have I got the completely wrong end of the stick here?

 

[Lester]

(THEORY)

FH may have their web server hosted by an ISP in which case the connection into that server will be contended by whoever is looking at the potentially hundreds of websites on that server. Additionally that server may be served by a switch/s connecting possibly dozens or hundreds of other servers. If the ISP had a gig going into a switch with 240 ports, that's potentially 4Mb per port (i think).

Also if you live in,say Preston, and you have an uncontended connection through an ISP, you will still have to go through a BT exchange, who will contend you on their backbone to Manchester - if the server is hosted in London you will be contended down the national backbone to the serving ISP at Telehouse. If Deebs has his own 0utward facing server at his office then you will be further contended on his own connection to the internet (along with all the other people on the BT backbone again)

I think that's it kind of.

So you are contended everywhere except to someone on your LAN (if there's only two of you)

 

[Lester]

Oh and you contend yourslf with your own outbound and inbound traffic I think.

 

[Xavier]

Remember, ISP contention ratios are a maxmum ratio. A 50:1 connection doesn't mean you're always sharing with another 49 people, but if you're on a REALLY busy exchange that's the maximum figure you'll hit. Therefore a 40:1 isn't a great leap forwards but is an improvement, and a 20:1 is teh w1n.

For the most part, with most ISPs, especially broadband vendors, you'll generally see the maximum bandwidth on the line, the things to consider are peering, which will play a big part in ping, and the overall service reliability.

Check ADSLGuides forums and ISP scoreboard for information on anyone you consider.

http://www.adslguide.org.uk/isps/compare.asp

http://bbs.adslguide.org.uk/

 

[Lester]

Actually what I'm trying to do is persuade a potential customer that there is no point spending over 500k on a gig WAN network with an uncontended core backbone, when as soon as he gets on the internet he'll be contended anyhoo. So an idea of a general contention would help my case.

 

[inactionman]

Actually what I'm trying to do is persuade a potential customer that there is no point spending over 500k on a gig WAN network with an uncontended core backbone, when as soon as he gets on the internet he'll be contended anyhoo. So an idea of a general contention would help my case.

I've worked in hosting previously, so I've had a lot of contact with ISP's, and to be honest it depends. Big ISP's can provide you with very large amounts of internet bandwidth, in fact if you buy enough they will lay on more bandwidth for you! It all depends on what SLA you have with them! You have to remember that LINX (the UK internet exchange, where the majority of the UK's ISP's peer, or connect to each other) runs on 10GE, and they have never have any contention issues.

Is this WAN network being used for internal traffic, and will the Client actually use it? WAN's are going out these days, it's generally a lot cheaper to get internet connections from the same provider, and VPN between the sites.

Does this help?