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| This theme is very intrincated. Why?
Because it’s based in a promise. Your ISP promised you a bandwidth for your
connection. Let's suppose that you signed for a symmetrical full-duplex 512
kbps connection (512 kbps uploading, from your workstation to the
Internet, and 512 kbps downloading, from the Internet to your
workstation). |
| Okay. Someday you are trying to download a very
important and heavy file. But when you check the downloader meter it
indicates just 5.6 KB/sec in average. Again, you make some calculation and
check your downloading throughput as: |
8 bits per byte x 1024 bytes /KB x 5.6 KB/sec
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| And you get a poor 45.875 kbps. Hey, what’s
happening? What about the 512 kbps they promised me? |
| But, things are a little bit more complicated.
Sometime things go better and you measure 380, 412, 286 kbps; sometime
things go worse and you get 45, 90, 110 kbps. And sometime you get
very close to the promised land but never, never, reach it. Finally,
perplexed, you call
your provider. |
| Then, after a lot of technical and complicated explanations, the spoken tells you that they guarantee 512
kbps from its instalation to your workstation, but they can’t respond (and they are right in some way) for what is ocurring behind
its main connection to the Internet. |
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| Said in other words: responsibility is diluted between all ISPs that service Internet in a hierarchical chain, from your workstation, to the site where your are trying to download the information from. |
| Anyone, or all of them, could be guilty of all or part of the problem: the main site, the ISP servicing the site,
and the chain of ISPs and their routers, switches, cables, antennas, satellites, etc, that the information has to travel
through for reaching, finally, your workstation.
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| When responsibility is diluted in many factors, no one is responsible at all. If your ISP is overselling its bandwidth capacity, it’s very difficult for you to be sure of that because they always could say: it’s not my problem, just a problem behind my main connection. And the same could say anyone behind that connection up to the site, including it, that you are trying to access. |
| Then, Internet access bandwidth is a colaborative resource and its "Quality of Service" could never be guaranteed because too many factors are involved. |
| Finally, when you are talking about an internal network,
i.e., your organization network, internet independent bandwidth (not involving connections to the Internet) could be guaranteed if "Quality of Service" guidelines are taken for the design and maintenance of the network itself.
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