Quote:
Originally Posted by Bill14564
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.
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When you say both cable and fiber are shared, with fiber, each customer is given their full fixed bandwidth were as with cable each customer is not. With cable each customer has to "share" the available bandwidth at all times. Yes, you are correct, in order to save money, cable companies over provision their systems hoping on average, there is enough bandwidth for everyone. When you hear some people in some Villages complaining of buffering at peak times, this means in these areas, the cable system is over provisioned and there is not enough bandwidth for every customer using the system at that period of time.
After you reach the ISP, the next bottleneck is how good is your ISP? Same issue. ISPs that generally charge more will have more server capacity and bandwidth to the internet and will adjust their provisioning to accomodate the usage on their system. When I worked at Verizon we did this all the time as usage on the FiOS network increased. With cheaper ISPs, there generally will be more over provisioning causing more slow-downs. I don't know much about Xfinity and Spectrum but I believe their "back-bone" and server network are very good which is why I keep saying the buffering some Villagers experience is probably from the home to the ISP. Quantum is owned by Lumen which will soon be AT&T so the Quantum back-bone and server network while very good now will remain high quality.
So, given the difference in the technology, and given the same cost and availability, which service would you get? Fiber or Cable?