Quote:
Originally Posted by bopat
Fiber is glass, glass breaks.
Copper is coax, it's shielded but subject to interference.
Wireless is subject to interference.
The myth that fiber isn't shared is just that, a myth. It's all shared at some point. There's no way quantum has dedicated 1gb up and down for every customer on their network.
The myth that copper is always shared is just that, a myth, it's dedicated at some point going to a switch. That's how networking works.
Your best bet is to find one with great service, low price, and lots of peering and points of presence. The bigger companies usually have the biggest backbones and the ability to manage traffic. Good luck!
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From what I can find, you are mostly right and I agree with you.
TL;DR: Both coax and fiber are shared but fiber runs faster which lets the provider greatly oversubscribed without many noticing.
The coax to your home is running (probably) DOCSIS 3.0 and is connected to a hub. All the coax connected to that hub sees the same signals. The bandwidth is separated into channels and you use 4/8/16/32 of them but your modem shares those channels with other modems on the same hub. On the other side of the hub is a connection to the ISP that carries all the data from the hub.
The fiber to the home is connected to a switch. The signals to/from your home are not seen by any other modems connected to that switch. You have the full bandwidth between you and the switch. On the other side of the switch is a connection to the ISP that carries all the data from the switch.
Because of the shared nature of the hub I may not always see 200Mbps throughput. Ideally, the provider limited the number of users and since not all users are active all the time and using all their bandwidth there is usually no slowdown, but it can happen.
Because of the nature of the switch I will always get my full bandwidth to the switch. However, since my data comes from locations off the switch, the connection to the ISP also comes into play. The connection out of the switch runs faster than the 1Gbps to my home but it also has a limit, maybe 100Gbps. If fewer than 100 customers are connected to the switch then that shared bandwidth can meet capacity. If more than 100 users are connected or if some of the users purchased 2Gbps then there can be a bottleneck.
The provider is betting on Villagers being typical users and normally pulling data at less then 100Mbps. At that usage he can sell 1,000 users his 2Gbps service, far exceeding what he can actually provide, and no one will know. Well, some will notice when they run a Speedtest but the answer will be that the slowdown was temporary and that you actually purchased
up to 2Gbps. Meanwhile, they will keep on collecting monthly payments.