Jack Bates wrote:
Is consumer grade bandwidth not deprioritised to business grade bandwidth?
No. Today a provider doesn't move packets *within their network* faster or slower based on if the recipient is a consumer or business customer. Today, all providers move all packets as fast as they can be moved on the links each customer has contracted for service on. (If you know of an exception to this practice, today, I'd love to see cites.) The usual congestion point is the end-user customer's line, and the customer can only receive packets as fast as their line allows but all packets are allowed over the customer's line with equal priority. There may also be congestion on backbone ingress lines, but again all packets are allowed over each of those lines with equal priority. Rarely, there is congestion within the network - not by design but (usually) due to equipment failure. Even then, all traffic is (usually) allowed thru with equal priority. I don't know of any networks that intentionally design their networks with interior systems that prioritize traffic thru their network. It doesn't pay. In the long run it's cheaper and easier to simply upgrade capacity than to figure out some way to delay some packets while letting others thru. Prioritization necessarily involves moving some traffic slower (because you can't move traffic faster) than some link (within the provider's network) allows, to allow "priority" traffic to more fully utilize the link while the other (non-priority) traffic is slowed. It effectively creates congestion points within the provider's network, if none existed prior to implementing the prioritization scheme. "I encourage all my competitors to do that." jc