[117953] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Does Internet Speed Vary by Season?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Tim Franklin)
Wed Oct 7 10:30:28 2009
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 2009 14:29:51 +0000 (GMT)
From: Tim Franklin <tim@pelican.org>
To: "Patrick W. Gilmore" <patrick@ianai.net>
In-Reply-To: <35C18BC1-B796-414A-956C-E4F4B9288ADB@ianai.net>
Cc: NANOG list <nanog@nanog.org>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
> I read the article and the follow up posts and I wonder if we are all
> using the same definition for "speed" here. The article seems to
> imply you don't get 6 Mbps on your DSL line in summer because the
> copper is hotter and it's harder to push electrons down the link.
> That is clearly BS, the clock is ticking six million times per second,
> period.
Are you trying to say that the *actual* DSL speed, as synchronised between the modems at either end, is neither a) affected by the physical characteristics of the copper pair, nor b) variable?
I agree the article is woolly between line-speed, throughput, goodput, congestion, etc, but to say that DSL line speed is in any way fixed in the same way that Ethernet or PDH / SDH lines are is contrary to every DSL platform I've worked with.
(Also, 6Mb/s DSL doesn't equate to 6 million ticks per second in anything relating to pushing electrons onto the wire. Remember, it's modem technology, just faster - your baud rate is still much lower than your bps.)
Regards,
Tim.
