On Mon, May 05, 2003 at 03:55:07PM +0100, Alan Davies wrote:
I noticed that Demon internet now offer better contention ratios than most (all?) other broadband providers.
We are currently with pavilion (part of the easynet group) and although speeds were great a couple of years ago we have noticed a steady decline in service - which is barely better than ISDN rates around Lunch times.
I assume this is down to contention - although we also use their filtered proxy service which has been a constriction in the past and I suspect that they use a transparent proxy on the non filtered service (is there a way to test for this?)
Go to a website which will display CGI variables and look for HTTP_VIA, HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR & REMOTE_HOST variables.
Not only might it be possible to get better bandwidth but Demon appears to be cheaper too (certainly less than we are paying Easynet for a 2MB service).
Of course with contention ratios of 5:1 it could still be sluggish if the other 4 users are also heavy on usage (as would be many schools).
Contention are frequently misunderstood. 5:1 actually means something more along the lines of 250 2M connections being multiplex over an ATM network onto one 100M ethernet port at the ISP end. -- Mark Evans St. Peter's CofE High School Phone: +44 1392 204764 X109 Fax: +44 1392 204763