- Messages
- 20,138
- Location
- Springfield, Missouri
So, since COVID-19 has hit the way people are working has changed, this in turn has changed the way traffic is flowing on the Internet. Now most people do not understand/care about this, but it is a problem. Here is some background, when a company buys internet service, they are buying a guaranteed amount of bandwidth. For instance, my Institute has a 5Gb internet connection, we are the only tenant on that line, and we get the full 5Gb all the time. When a home user buys an internet connection they are buying a maximum amount of bandwidth, in this case let’s use Google fiber (just because they offer an easy amount to calculate) they provide users 1Gb of bandwidth maximum.
How does this play into what we are seeing today? Well, ~80% of internet traffic just went from companies to homes. This means that all the traffic just went from guaranteed bandwidth to maximum bandwidth.
Here is where it gets you, Google Fiber gives all its customers 1Gb but that is not something they can really do affordably. So, what is done by every provider is something called “Over-subscribing”. What oversubscribing does is allow many customers to share one large internet connection, this is common practice and has been done since networking began.
Here is how it works; Google gives an entire apartment complex or neighborhood 1Gb of bandwidth to each customer, but all those connections run into say a single 10Gb connection to the internet (let’s say 100 customers to one 10Gb link to the internet or 10 to 1). They can do this because it is highly unlikely that every customer on the connection will need 1Gb all the time. In fact, it is unlikely that daily use of every customer together will not exceed the 10Gb they have provided to the area. When/If they do reach that limit, each customer’s bandwidth is throttled down to keep it within the 10Gb for the area.
This has worked for a very long time and makes it affordable for internet providers and usable for customers.
Enter COVID-19 – Everyone goes home, they are there all day working, streaming movies, video chatting, and not just one-person, entire families. Guess what, now you have just killed the over-subscription model. Your 1Gb of bandwidth just went to something much much lower (maybe half or a quarter) and this is why sometimes that Teams meeting, or the Zoom meeting works great and other times it is a complete disaster. Why some people are fuzzy and others are not.
The prime times for bandwidth reduction used to be mornings and evenings and now that everyone is work from home the prime time for bandwidth reduction is ~6am to ~7pm. So, the next time you have a frozen video or Disney+ won’t load or the internet is just “slow” ask yourself, what are my neighbors doing.
And you all thought the party line system was dead and gone.
How does this play into what we are seeing today? Well, ~80% of internet traffic just went from companies to homes. This means that all the traffic just went from guaranteed bandwidth to maximum bandwidth.
Here is where it gets you, Google Fiber gives all its customers 1Gb but that is not something they can really do affordably. So, what is done by every provider is something called “Over-subscribing”. What oversubscribing does is allow many customers to share one large internet connection, this is common practice and has been done since networking began.
Here is how it works; Google gives an entire apartment complex or neighborhood 1Gb of bandwidth to each customer, but all those connections run into say a single 10Gb connection to the internet (let’s say 100 customers to one 10Gb link to the internet or 10 to 1). They can do this because it is highly unlikely that every customer on the connection will need 1Gb all the time. In fact, it is unlikely that daily use of every customer together will not exceed the 10Gb they have provided to the area. When/If they do reach that limit, each customer’s bandwidth is throttled down to keep it within the 10Gb for the area.
This has worked for a very long time and makes it affordable for internet providers and usable for customers.
Enter COVID-19 – Everyone goes home, they are there all day working, streaming movies, video chatting, and not just one-person, entire families. Guess what, now you have just killed the over-subscription model. Your 1Gb of bandwidth just went to something much much lower (maybe half or a quarter) and this is why sometimes that Teams meeting, or the Zoom meeting works great and other times it is a complete disaster. Why some people are fuzzy and others are not.
The prime times for bandwidth reduction used to be mornings and evenings and now that everyone is work from home the prime time for bandwidth reduction is ~6am to ~7pm. So, the next time you have a frozen video or Disney+ won’t load or the internet is just “slow” ask yourself, what are my neighbors doing.
And you all thought the party line system was dead and gone.
