Yes, I know, people use download bandwidth far more than they need upload bandwidth. But I don’t get why it isn’t comparable anyway. Why is it always so much lower?
In: 3
Money.
A signal can only be sent down a wire one way at any moment in time. Any upload subtracts from the download. Most Internet connections are contended. The contention ratio can be anywhere from 1:1 (dedicated) for an expensive business connection, to 1:50 for a domestic connection (50 houses share the pool!). By limiting upload speeds, the ISP can guarantee download speeds for at a higher contention ratio since less of the pool can be used up by uploads. Most users don’t care that much about upload speeds so the ISP gets away with it. (It also doesn’t make much difference to many users).
It does however make a very big difference for a business user who has servers which need to send and receive significant quantities of data. Forcing domestic connections to be asymmetric (different upload/download) means a domestic connection can’t be used for a business purpose. Lots of domestic connections are actually pretty fast download nowadays and would be perfect for many small businesses if it weren’t for the comparatively slow upload speed.
ISP’s charge way more for symmetric (same upload/download) connections since they know businesses need them and have no choice but to pay. A not particularly fast (100Mbps) uncontented 1:1 upload/download connection might be £250 per month in the UK.
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