Theres nothing I love more than troubleshooting an internet connection.
With that preamble out of the way, this weeksTech 911letter comes from Lifehacker readerBen.
He writes:
Sir, I currently have
Charter Spectrum for Internet only.
I reside in Reno, Nevada.
Sincerely,
Trying to get up in Reno.
Its all about the moneyand the pipe
Ben, I love your signature.
Thats the good news.
See, your upload speed istypicallygoing to be much, much slower than your download speed.
That would imply that ones uploadanddownload speeds were equal, and they are not.
You have to find a little digging to get this information, but Cox does list out separatedownload/upload limitselsewhere.
Why is this the case?
Well, most people simply use the internet to download, download, and download some more.
The available connection bandwidthisnt infinite, after all.
From the post:
A cable plant is all the houses and businesses that share a single headend.
This, more than anything else, is why your internet speeds slow down in the early evening.
10, each with 100 houses?
4, each with 250?
This is the first place the cable company can screw you.
If you devote too much bandwidth to uploads, it will go unused.
Devote too little and you end up causing congestion.
If you dont set this properly, you will royally screw up your signals.
Thats a lot to digest.
But the simple truth remains that more people download data than upload it.
And thats the state of the internet for you in 2020.
It would be wonderful if we all had fiber-grade service that gave us incredibly fast internet access, period.
