Internet Upload/Download Speeds

[jshhndsd]

1 hour ago, Linx105 said:

You can sum up Ethernet speeds  from your ISP into four categories E10,E100,E1000(GIGE) and 10GigE. Each of these are the port speed in which your ISP can hand off to you, E10 is up to 10Mbps, E100 up to 100Mbps and E1000 up to 1000Mpbs and 10GigE up to 10Gigs. The actual throughput you are getting is determined by the transport equipment being used to get service to you and the QOS settings you are paying for. Interfacing GIGE with your ISP wont get you higher speeds than what you are paying for since you are setting up  the port to be able to receive up to 1000Mbps and not paying for a higher speeds from your ISP. 

Thank you for your reply.

 

I get that the leaks are a representation of Alien cross talk (AXT) that interferes with transfers and also lengthening the cable means that data has a longer way to travel so it causes a sort of time delay. With regards to the speed at which data travels to reach its destination, how is this determined? What causes a Cat6 for example to travel much faster than a Cat5? Are there more wires integrated into the cable?

[Linx105]

6 minutes ago, skywake said:

It's kinda like that but not quite. The rating of the cable is more analogous to a rating of how leaky the hose is. The leakier it is the less likely you are going to be able to get a full flow of water at the other end. And it's dependent on the distance also. For example you could have a very leaky hose but over 1m you're not going to loose that much water. But over 100m though the quality of your hose starts to matter a bit more. And if you start wanting to push more water down it? The quality of the hose also starts to matter.

 

Probably better to think of a network cable in the same way you think of WiFi. Where the different category of cables are like different materials the signal has to travel through. If you get a higher category cable it's kinda similar to having less dense air/walls between you and the AP. If you are close enough it probably won't matter because you'll connect at the highest speed regardless. But over long distances and with higher speeds? You might be dropped down a bit.

 

But it won't impact your internet speed either way. Well, unless you have a >1Gbps internet connection.... or a >100Mbps connection and a huge house

100% agree with you. The hose analogy can get very complicated when using it to describe networking since there is so many factors that come into play in relation to internet speed. The more you understand about networking the more you realize how terribly inaccurate my analogy is, but I like using it for people who don't have a strong networking background since it makes it easier to understand. 

[jshhndsd]

10 minutes ago, KuJoe said:

What do you mean? Are you asking how they determine what speeds to offer clients or how they control the speeds? Please elaborate.

Yes to both. How do they determine what speeds to offer clients based on their plan and how is this controlled? 

[NoRomanBatmansAllowed]

9 minutes ago, jshhndsd said:

Hi,

 

I'm interested to know how internet download and upload speeds are calculated by an ISP? For example a 10GB plan might yield a 15mbps download speed with upload at 1mbps.

 

Thanks in advance.

You buy the internet plans with 2 specifications (usually)

Data Limit, and Data Transfer speeds. 

 

Data Limit is how much data you can transfer in a month e.g. 300GB

 

Data Transfer speeds however, is how fast this data can transfer at maximum speeds (they make no guarantees on minimum speeds). So this would be like 15Mbps or even Gigabit(1000Mbps).

 

The Data Transfer speeds are separated into Download and Upload speeds (they can be different), which I think is self-explanatory.

[KuJoe]

5 minutes ago, jshhndsd said:

Yes to both. How do they determine what speeds to offer clients based on their plan and how is this controlled? 

The speeds they offer are based on a lot of factors. I don't know all of them but population, upstream providers, hardware, and other ISPs in the area are probably big factors.

 

How they control the bandwidth is setting QoS-like settings on their end to "shape" the traffic to fit in certain limits. If you have a managed switch you can adjust the port speed of each port (although this is usually a flat rate for both upload and download, you can get granular on enterprise hardware and limit the port by ingress/inbound and egress/outbound), this is basically what the ISP is doing although they might not be doing it for a physical port depending on the size of the ISP.

[jshhndsd]

11 minutes ago, Linx105 said:

100% agree with you. The hose analogy can get very complicated when using it to describe networking since there is so many factors that come into play in relation to internet speed. The more you understand about networking the more you realize how terribly inaccurate my analogy is, but I like using it for people who don't have a strong networking background since it makes it easier to understand. 

I have another question and that is,  how do ISP's determine what internet speeds (download/upload) to offer clients based on their plan and how is this controlled? 

[KuJoe]

1 minute ago, jshhndsd said:

I have another question and that is,  how do ISP's determine what internet speeds (download/upload) to offer clients based on their plan and how is this controlled? 

Here you go: 

 

 

[Linx105]

14 minutes ago, jshhndsd said:

What causes a Cat6 for example to travel much faster than a Cat5? Are there more wires integrated into the cable?

Cat 6 is twisted tighter together and has thicker gauge cables than cat5. The twists help reduce cross talk and the thicket gauge wire helps with transmitting higher frequency( I think), along with better shielding. 

 

14 minutes ago, jshhndsd said:

With regards to the speed at which data travels to reach its destination, how is this determined?

Within your Lan this is determined by the equipment. Routers,switches,pcs...etc

1 minute ago, jshhndsd said:

I have another question and that is,  how do ISP's determine what internet speeds (download/upload) to offer clients based on their plan and how is this controlled? 

From and ISP standpoint this is determined by many factors here are just a few: Distance from the ISP and the transport technology used to get a connecting to your house example. FTTH,ADSL,Dial up. They take factors like this into consideration and set up the plans accordingly based off what they are using to provide you service.

[jshhndsd]

2 minutes ago, Linx105 said:

Cat 6 is twisted tighter together and has thicker gauge cables than cat5. The twists help reduce cross talk and the thicket gauge wire helps with transmitting higher frequency( I think), along with better shielding. 

 

Within your Lan this is determined by the equipment. Routers,switches,pcs...etc

From and ISP standpoint this is determined by many factors here are just a few: Distance from the ISP and the transport technology used to get a connecting to your house example. FTTH,ADSL,Dial up. They take factors like this into consideration and set up the plans accordingly based off what they are using to provide you service.

Thanks. So you could be on a 10GB plan with 12mbps or so of download speed or be on 100GB plan in the same location but the download speed will remain the same depending on those factors among others? While someone in a better setting based on those factors and on the same 10GB plan as me could experience better speeds? I'm sorry for being a nuisance but I obsess over finer details in things until I'm happy that I've understood everything. Thank you for your patience.  

[Kichkinet]

The 2 specifications you mention are pretty much completely unrelated.  First lets talk about bandwidth or data rate which is 15Mbps Up 1Mbps Down this means that at maximum you can download 15 Megabits per second and 1Megabits per second up to servers on the internet.  The second spec you gave is a data cap so at max you can download 10 GB(GigaBytes) of data per month.

 

There are a lot of factors in determining what speed they offer including but not limited to: the ISP's own internet connection, upstream users, how the signal is physically getting to your device (ie RJ11 (phone line) has a FAR lower maximum data rate than Coax or optical fiber and even the way the signal is sent over the fiber determines the max data rate), and the total number of users (there is a industry standard of over subscribing the service by 80% since that amount of over subscription typically yields almost 100% utilization of the ISP's available bandwitdth).

 

There are several factors determining what data cap you have mostly dealing with the number of subscribers and the number of competing ISPs in the area as well as the technology used. The data cap used in your example is pretty tiny suggesting it is a mobile carrier where they assume that you will not be downloading large files.  If it is not a mobile carrier then i am not sure why it would be that small since you could reach your cap in 1.48 hours if you set a large file or game to download.

[KuJoe]

3 minutes ago, jshhndsd said:

Thanks. So you could be on a 10GB plan with 12mbps or so of download speed or be on 100GB plan in the same location but the download speed will remain the same depending on those factors among others? While someone in a better setting based on those factors and on the same 10GB plan as me could experience better speeds? I'm sorry for being a nuisance but I obsess over finer details in things until I'm happy that I've understood everything. Thank you for your patience.  

The data caps are there so the ISP can better manage and oversell their bandwidth. ISPs don't pay for bandwidth in blocks of GB or TB, they pay on what's called 95th percentile billing (or in rare cases a higher/lower %), basically they have multiple >1Gbps ports (depending on their size) connecting to one or more upstream providers (i.e. Cogent, Hurricane Electric, Level3, XO, TWTC, etc... depending on your location) and they pay for their bandwidth based on the utilization of their network ports for 95% of their billing cycle. If some areas they cover are using more bandwidth than others they might set the data cap lower to balance out their network utilization or if they are paying more to service an area then they'll reduce the amount people in that area can consume.

[Tamesh16]

Unlimited Data plan : STated 2.5 mbs:

Download Speed 2.1Mbs

Upload Speed: 0.7 mbs 

 

Top Speed Offered in the country 14 Mbs  ( Guyana, South America )

[KuJoe]

Another thing to understand that's not obvious to most people is that your bandwidth at home is a shared resource. In an ideal world if you paid for a 10Mbps port then you'd have 10Mbps worth of bandwidth allocated to you all the way from your house to your upstream but that's rarely the case since the density of a neighborhood or city can vary. If you look at a 24 port GigE switch it gives you a good idea of how a lot of ISPs are setup. There are 24 ports on the switch, all with 1Gbps speeds but only a few of those ports are plugged into the router while the rest are plugged into computers. In a perfect world 12 of the ports would be plugged into the router and 12 into the computers but from an ISP perspective that's a lot of wasted ports (some ports cost over to $5k each when you start looking at the higher end core routers). In the real world it would be more like 20 ports to computers and 4 to the router(s). Now of course a lot of enterprise switches can have 10Gbps ports which is nice if you go straight from the computers to the switches to the routers but for a residential ISP you're computer is probably going through half a dozen switches before it hits the edge router so the switch your computer is plugged into (with 19 other computers) is now plugged into another switch with 19 other switches and so on and so on.

 

Sorry for the rambling, I just figured this will help you understand it a bit more.

[Linx105]

2 minutes ago, jshhndsd said:

Thanks. So you could be on a 10GB plan with 12mbps or so of download speed or be on 100GB plan in the same location but the download speed will remain the same depending on those factors among others? While someone in a better setting based on those factors and on the same 10GB plan as me could experience better speeds? I'm sorry for being a nuisance but I obsess over finer details in things until I'm happy that I've understood everything. Thank you for your patience.  

You could have a 1Gb connection with the ISP but they will control the speed you are getting based off the service you are buying. So plans like 100Mbps , 200Mbps all the way up to the full 1Gb connection. I don't know for sure if ISPs are offering 10Gb or 100Gb connections for residential internet yet. Generally if you are getting a Gige connection with your ISP everyone around you will have access to similar speeds, because most Gige connections have a fiber back haul to the ISP central office at some point. Where you will see distance becoming a big factor is in neighborhoods without fiber using services such as DSL (ADSL,VDSL) that use copper to connect to the central office. Your not being a nuisance its good to ask questions. I'm learning some new things from other posters in this thread as well as refreshing my memory so I'm happy haha. 

[jshhndsd]

5 minutes ago, Linx105 said:

You could have a 1Gb connection with the ISP but they will control the speed you are getting based off the service you are buying. So plans like 100Mbps , 200Mbps all the way up to the full 1Gb connection. I don't know for sure if ISPs are offering 10Gb or 100Gb connections for residential internet yet. Generally if you are getting a Gige connection with your ISP everyone around you will have access to similar speeds, because most Gige connections have a fiber back haul to the ISP central office at some point. Where you will see distance becoming a big factor is in neighborhoods without fiber using services such as DSL (ADSL,VDSL) that use copper to connect to the central office. Your not being a nuisance its good to ask questions. I'm learning some new things from other posters in this thread as well as refreshing my memory so I'm happy haha. 

Thank you. Just when I think I've got the hang of something, something else comes along to add meaning and also confusion lol but I am slowly starting to understand how it works.

[jshhndsd]

22 minutes ago, KuJoe said:

Another thing to understand that's not obvious to most people is that your bandwidth at home is a shared resource. In an ideal world if you paid for a 10Mbps port then you'd have 10Mbps worth of bandwidth allocated to you all the way from your house to your upstream but that's rarely the case since the density of a neighborhood or city can vary. If you look at a 24 port GigE switch it gives you a good idea of how a lot of ISPs are setup. There are 24 ports on the switch, all with 1Gbps speeds but only a few of those ports are plugged into the router while the rest are plugged into computers. In a perfect world 12 of the ports would be plugged into the router and 12 into the computers but from an ISP perspective that's a lot of wasted ports (some ports cost over to $5k each when you start looking at the higher end core routers). In the real world it would be more like 20 ports to computers and 4 to the router(s). Now of course a lot of enterprise switches can have 10Gbps ports which is nice if you go straight from the computers to the switches to the routers but for a residential ISP you're computer is probably going through half a dozen switches before it hits the edge router so the switch your computer is plugged into (with 19 other computers) is now plugged into another switch with 19 other switches and so on and so on.

 

Sorry for the rambling, I just figured this will help you understand it a bit more.

Thank you. Could you please elaborate on the 20 ports to computer scenario? 

[jshhndsd]

39 minutes ago, KuJoe said:

The data caps are there so the ISP can better manage and oversell their bandwidth. ISPs don't pay for bandwidth in blocks of GB or TB, they pay on what's called 95th percentile billing (or in rare cases a higher/lower %), basically they have multiple >1Gbps ports (depending on their size) connecting to one or more upstream providers (i.e. Cogent, Hurricane Electric, Level3, XO, TWTC, etc... depending on your location) and they pay for their bandwidth based on the utilization of their network ports for 95% of their billing cycle. If some areas they cover are using more bandwidth than others they might set the data cap lower to balance out their network utilization or if they are paying more to service an area then they'll reduce the amount people in that area can consume.

So basically they are throttling speeds to reduce their payment to upstream providers in certain cases? The more they use the more they pay? The price isn't fixed?

[KuJoe]

Just now, jshhndsd said:

Thank you. Could you please elaborate on the 20 ports to computer scenario? 

I don't really know how to, it's just an arbitrary number I picked since I figured most people have or have seen a 24 port switch before. I picked the number 20 because it just makes sense to me in my mind (on a 24 port switch I reserve 4 ports for LACP/802.3ad to the routers for redundancy). Some ISPs might divide it up differently but no decent sized residential ISP will ever assign 50% of their ports to their clients and the other 50% to their network unless you're paying a premium.

 

Bandwidth is all about overselling, I do it to my clients and my data centers do it to me and the upstream providers do it to my data centers otherwise they'd just be leaving money on the table and businesses don't like doing that. Even if you buy a "dedicated port", the bandwidth you're paying for is oversold somewhere down the line.

[KuJoe]

13 minutes ago, jshhndsd said:

So basically they are throttling speeds to reduce their payment to upstream providers in certain cases? The more they use the more they pay? The price isn't fixed?

For the most part yes, there are two circumstances I can think of in which they have a fixed price (one of them hurts the clients while the other hurts the company) but I doubt a residential ISP would do either of those.

[jshhndsd]

58 minutes ago, KuJoe said:

I don't really know how to, it's just an arbitrary number I picked since I figured most people have or have seen a 24 port switch before. I picked the number 20 because it just makes sense to me in my mind (on a 24 port switch I reserve 4 ports for LACP/802.3ad to the routers for redundancy). Some ISPs might divide it up differently but no decent sized residential ISP will ever assign 50% of their ports to their clients and the other 50% to their network unless you're paying a premium.

 

Bandwidth is all about overselling, I do it to my clients and my data centers do it to me and the upstream providers do it to my data centers otherwise they'd just be leaving money on the table and businesses don't like doing that. Even if you buy a "dedicated port", the bandwidth you're paying for is oversold somewhere down the line.

 

[jshhndsd]

43 minutes ago, KuJoe said:

For the most part yes, there are two circumstances I can think of in which they have a fixed price (one of them hurts the clients while the other hurts the company) but I doubt a residential ISP would do either of those.

So, in essence how much speed you get depends on how much the ISP is able to pay unless they're rich enough to bump up the speed and pay for it? Which theoretically in turn causes our price plans to go up. Meaning that we are really paying for the speed regardless of the data plan?

 

I'd like to know more about that fixed price scenario if you're willing to share some of the dark side of ISP's lol

[KuJoe]

18 minutes ago, jshhndsd said:

I'd like to know more about that fixed price scenario if you're willing to share some of the dark side of ISP's lol

When you buy bandwidth from upstream providers your price depends on two things:

1) Your port speed/limit (i.e. 1Mbps, 100Mbps, 1Gbps, 10Gbps, 100Gbps, etc...).

2) Your bandwidth commitment (ideally your commitment should be as close to your usage as possible to avoid paying more or less than you need to).

 

Example: I can buy a 10Gbps port with a 1Gbps commitment from Cogent for $1000/month (more or less depending on the location). This means I can theoretically use 10Gbps of bandwidth 24x7 because I pay for a 10Gbps (10,000Mbps) port but anything over the 1Gbps (1000Mbps) commit is considered an overage and billed at a higher rate. As long as my 95th% stays at or below 1000Mbps for the month my cost for that bandwidth is $1000/month. Now if I use 1001Mbps then I pay $1000 for that month plus the overage cost of the extra 1Mbps (which can be over 10x the cost I was paying for the first 1000Mbps depending on location). If I use 999Mbps then I still pay $1000 for that month because I committed to 1000Mbps, I don't get a discount/credit/refund for using less than 1000Mbps. My commitment level can be as low as 1Mbps and as high as 10,000Mbps on a 10Gbps port.

 

Now there are two ways an ISP can have a fixed cost for bandwidth:

1. The ISP gets a 10Gbps port with a 10Gbps commit which means they'll never have overage but if their clients are only using 100Mbps of the 10,000Mbps available then the ISP is grossly overpaying for bandwidth. This is good for the clients but bad for the ISP.
2. The ISP gets a 1Gbps port with a 1Gbps commit and their clients use all 1Gbps of the port. Again, they'll never have an overage but their clients are fighting for bandwidth since the port is always at 100% regardless of how many people are online or sign-up for new service. This is good for the ISP but bad for the clients.

That's why ideally the ISP will get a port speed/limit higher than what they need and a bandwidth commit as close to their normal usage as possible to avoid additional costs. This is why limiting a client's ability to impact their 95th% is so important because if they pay for a certain amount the overages can be killer (or at the very least adding more routers/ports can be a costly one time fee.

 

Now this is just a really dumbed down example, most decent sized ISPs have multiple upstream connections so they might have a 50+Gbps commit on 6x10Gbps ports or more.

 

Another thing to keep in mind is DDoS attacks, ISPs still pay for the bandwidth those attacks use once it hits their network. But that's a completely different discussion and I don't have much insight into how residential ISPs handle DDoS attacks.