And additionally, how does higher quality internet change that?
In: 12
There’s only a certain amount of “stuff” that can get through an Internet connection every second. Assume it’s 100 pieces of “stuff” every second. If person A asks for 35 pieces of stuff a second, that leaves 65 pieces of stuff remaining in the Internet connection. If persons B and C also ask for 35 pieces of stuff, that’s a request of 105 pieces of stuff per second, and the connection can only handle 100.
This results in the 5 pieces of stuff left over having to be handled in the next second, delaying the request by one second. This also results in the connection only being able to handle 95 in the next second.
Now if 10 more people request 35 every second, then you can see how there can be a lot of slow down as only 100 is being accessible to 13 people, each requesting 35 per second.
Think of the internet like two guys talking in a room. Once more people start talking it becomes harder to hear the other person. You might miss a word or two, but you can get the gist of his sentence. You may have to say “can you repeat that?”. (Data transmission, packets, error checking)
If there can only be so many people in a room, at some point it fills up and you may be asked to go to a different room, or told to keep your volume down to avoid disturbing more important people. (Bandwidth, QoS,)
If you want to talk to Steve, but 10 other people are talking to him, he may not hear you right away, or might get his conversations jumbled up a bit. (Bottlenecks)
Higher priority internet means better soundproofing in the rooms, and you’re more likely to get a good spot to talk to others. (Higher bandwidth, better quality switches, higher traffic prioritization, etc.)
A single cable is only physically able to send a certain number of bits per second. This is based on physics and engineering limits of how fast you can switch a laser (if you’re sending bits as light over a fiber optic cable) or a transistor (if you’re sending bits as electrical pulses over a copper cable), and the cable’s tendency to smear and weaken the signal (which gets worse as you transmit bits faster or over longer distances, if you push the limits too much your signal turns into garbage and the receiver can’t tell 1’s from 0’s).
CableCo might have a single 10,000 megabits cable between your neighborhood and its main network, and you pay CableCo for 100 megabit Internet. Typically CableCo will *oversubscribe* its cable — that is, CableCo will happily accept subscription fees from 500 people in your neighborhood, and promise them all 100 megabits.
If no more than 100 people want to max out their Internet connections at a time, it’s fine — the cable has enough capacity to give 100 people 100 mbps, and everyone’s happy because they get what they were promised.
Slowdown happens when the cable capacity is exceeded. If 200 people try to max out their Internet, they end up with 50 mbps. The cable can’t give them any more.
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