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maderas
join:2011-11-27

maderas

Member

Question about bandwidth exhaustion.

I've been suffering from latency issues during prime usage hours for the past couple of weeks, but I've noticed on sites like Speedtest.net that I can connect to certain locations just fine.

If my town itself was oversold and suffering from exhaustion then ANY site I tried to use would be suffering from reduced speed and increased latency, correct? Does that mean it's possible that non-local areas my connection is being routed through (like Denver, which always has a 200ms+ latency when I ping it during primetime trouble) are responsible for my lag spikes? Is this from those areas being oversold?

I have an ongoing battle with CL customer support, so any insight would be appreciated.

billaustin
they call me Mr. Bill
MVM
join:2001-10-13
North Las Vegas, NV

billaustin

MVM

This is vague and general, and will vary by ISP and how they move their data, but areas are usually connected in a hub and spoke pattern. The hub for each smaller area connects to a regional center. The regional hubs connect to a data center in a metro area. The metro areas connect to each other through large pipes. At several points across the country, the large pipes from each carrier meet and exchange traffic. Depending on the ISP, and how much of the pipe they own, the data can be handed off to other carriers several times before it hits an exchange point, and can pass through several other carries before it hits its destination.

So, yes, it is possible to be in an area that is not oversold, but be affected by congestion at a point further upstream. That congestion can be caused by many things. It could be a router that can't handle the data load, or too small a pipe for the upstream connection. In many cases, it is from the failure of the ISP to upgrade their infrastructure to accommodate what they are selling. It can also be caused by the carrier the ISP passes the data to failing to upgrade their infrastructure to provided adequate capacity.