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Feature Articles
What is a 'Contention Ratio?'
With ADSL and unmetered Internet packages, some of
the bandwidth is shared between your connection and that of other users. For example,
if the service is contended at 20:1, it means that you share the bandwidth with
up to 19 other users.
Therefore, the performance of an ADSL connection
will vary according to time of day and time of week, depending on how many other
users happen to be online at that moment. For unmetered dial-up packages via modem
or ISDN, this may result in engaged tones at peek times.
Action ISP have absolutely no control over this,
nor do any other ISPs that provide products from the BT Wholesale range. The contention
ratio is handled within BT's network and purely depends on the service you choose.
This means that in the worst possible case a home
ADSL user could be sharing a 512 Kbit/s connection with up to 49 other users.
If all users were downloading files at the same time, theoretically you would
only get 10 Kbit/s, which is much slower than the average modem speed.
However, in reality this scenario is extremely unlikely
to happen and you should usually find an ADSL connection to substantially faster
than a modem connection!
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