symmetric vs. asymmetric [was: Verizon Policy Statement on Net Neutrality]

Fri Feb 27 21:56:31 UTC 2015

On 02/27/2015 01:27 PM, Jack Bates wrote:
> My 2 cents. I don't design these things, but you'd think people would
> start realizing that static allocation is kind of limiting. Giving
> someone 50mb/s with 20mb/s waste is annoying when they are saturating
> 3mb/s the opposite direction. Wouldn't it be cool if your backup at
> night could use 50mb/s upstream and drop your downstream to 5mb/s
> because you aren't downloading anything?

That's possible with multicarrier technology, such as xDSL.  When you
get into the data-over-cable technology, you find a completely different
story -- it's a system limitation that you have an upstream channel that
is less efficient than the downstream channel because the upstream
channel has to be accessed by a number of sources, with access control,
whereas the downstream channel is nothing more than a broadcast pipe
(just like 10base-2 Ethernet) where you pick your packets out of the stream.

Other technologies have their quirks, too...