broadband recommendations, Arlington

[Bill Horne]

Drew,

"Bridged" is a misnomer: a hangover from the Ethernet days. Actually the designer/manager of your DSLAM will decide what level of concentration each Private Virtual Circuit will have as it goes into the ATM cloud.

The more concentration, the more contention, so you are "bridged" with the other users in the sense that you all compete for the same bandwidth, which is whatever the transport provider put into the PVC. BTW, even business users will have some level of
concentration, since the limiting factor is the DSL line speed, but it's typically 1/4 to 1/2 that of residential users.

Even with a much lower concentration ratio on a "business" *DSL line, high-end business users will usually spring for a T1 line going straight to their ISP, and make contractual arrangements for every aspect of their connectivity.

You pays your money, you takes your chances: as I said, kudos to Speakeasy for being upfront about it.

Bill

> Drew Taylor wrote:
>
> Thank you for the very clear explanation. I've never had it explained to me
> before. :-)
>
> So basically all the folks on the DSLAM I connect to share the same router
> port, and thus compete with each other for the bandwidth for that port. I'm
> still aggregated w/ other users, just one step further up the network. So
> as long as the router is fast enough to handle the traffic, and has
> sufficient upstream bandwidth (never been a problem w/ SE) there should be
> no problems w/ a bridged connection, correct?
>
> Drew
>
> At 11:34 AM 6/5/02 -0400, Bill Horne wrote:
>
> >A bridged connection means that (like cable) you share the available
> >bandwidth with other customers. Although *DSL gives you a dedicated line
> >to the local central office, you're line is bridged with others once it's
> >there. Whether that's "bad" or not
> >depends on the throughput available to you, which depends on the mix of
> >bandwidth and demand in/out of that particular CO.
> >
> >A routed connection gives you the advantage of your own router port, and
> >thus the benefit of not competing with other users for the bandwidth
> >available on the port(s) that connect to the bridge(s) in a particular
> >location. Although you'll still share the
> >"backbone" bandwidth, you'll be less sensitive to time of day congestion.
>
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--
Bill Horne
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