What is Maximum Contention Ratio?

By Anna Konig Staff Writer

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Contention Ratio is the number of users sharing one unit of data capacity. The lower the contention ratio the higher the quality of service. A 50:1 contention ratio would mean that up to 50 broadband customers are sharing the same bandwidth at any one time.

The quality and speed of your broadband connection is dependent on the number of users online at any given time. Business broadband services will often have much lower contention ratios to enable the ISP's to give business users a more consistent quality of service.

The higher the contention ratio the cheaper the broadband package will be. The contention ratio is an important factor involved in the quality and speed of your chosen broadband package. The average contention ratio for a home user package is 50:1 and 20:1 for a business package.

Why should I care about contention ratios?

Most broadband services are provided on a 50:1 contention ratio. This means that at any one time you may be sharing your Internet access with up to 49 other users all sharing the same bandwidth.

So, if you are using a 512kb connection and each of the other users sharing the access are using it at the same time, your connection speed could be reduced to as little as 10kb!

Fortunately it is unlikely that everyone uses the connection at the same time. However this does highlight the importance of choosing an ISP with a low contention ratio as the fewer people sharing the line, the more bandwidth you potentially have.

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