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What is Contention Ratio?

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What is Contention Ratio?

Contention ratio refers to the bandwidth sharing between a number of other users. To enable affordable broadband, your broadband connection is actually shared with a number of other users. The number of other users you share bandwidth with, is what is called your "contention ratio".

 

Typical contention ratios for ADSL are around 50:1, meaning, that there are 49 other users who share your bandwidth.

 

This normally does not present any problems, however, heavy use of the broadband network by other users can slow your own connection. Similarly, if you are a heavy user of bandwidth, you may slow the performance for other broadband users.

 

Cable broadband tends to have higher contention ratios than ADSL since the underground fiber-optic cables allow greater bandwidth than ADSL.

 

Contention ratios with cable can be around 100:1; meaning 99 other users can be connected to the internet using the same bandwidth as you, however, this higher usage is easily offset by the additional amount of data that can be transferred at the same time over a cable network.