Let’s say I have a 100mbps internet connection. I call the ISP and pay extra for a 200 mbps connection, and it gets faster with no new hardware. Does someone turn a knob somewhere?
Thanks.
In: Technology
Your speed is artificially limited by the ISP’s piece of equipment on the other side of the wire from your modem (be it DSL, cable, fiber transceiver, wireless transceiver, whatever). Software tracks the amount of data sent to you over time, and when the amount exceeds your limit, the device will briefly take your data hostage and hold on to it for a short amount of time, rather than immediately sending it on to you.
The server you’re downloading from is looking for acknowledgements from you — your device will periodically tell the server how many packets of data it has received. When your ISP throttles your data rate, the server notices that it sent 100 packets but you only got 80 of them so far. Based on this, the server now knows that you can’t handle data at that speed. So, the server starts sending data to you more slowly. At some point, the server and your ISP balance out — the server sends data just below your limit, and your ISP stops delaying your data.
Turning on more bandwidth is just your ISP instructing their hardware to allow more data through.
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