On Tue, Jul 17, 2018, at 18:12, Andy Ringsmuth wrote:
I suppose in reality it’s no different than any other utility. My home has 200 amp electrical service. Will I ever use 200 amps at one time?
No, because at 201 Amps instantaneous the breaker will cut everything.
Highly highly unlikely. But if my electrical utility wanted to advertise “200 amp service in all homes we supply!” they sure could. Would an electrician be able to test it? I’m sure there is a way somehow.
Will they deal with customers calling to complain that their (unknown to the utility) "megatron equipment" says it cannot draw 199 Amps from a single outlet ? I don't think so. They just ensure the global breaker will not trigger when oven+microwave+home-wide air-con+water heating+BT rig in the basement all draw all they can (i.e. up to ~25 Amps each) for something like 5 min.
saturate my home fiber 300 mbit synchronous connection? Every now and then yes, but rarely. Although if I’m paying for 300 and not getting it, my ISP will be hearing from me.
Will you waste your time if some random site says "you have 200 Mbps" ? On residential, we only accept complaints for tests in pre-determined (wired, no intermediate device, select set of test servers and tools, customer hardware check) conditions and only for results lower than 60-70% of "advertised speed". If wireless is invoved, test is being dismissed as "dear customer, please fix your network, regards". For pro/enterprise service, we use higher bandwidth threshold, but we do expect the other side to be competent enough for something like an iperf3 test. However, I have to mention that for the moment we can afford to run a congestion-free network (strictly less than 80% charge - usually less than 50% - measured with 1-minute sampling).
If my electrical utility told me “hey, you can upgrade to 500 amp
Are the 200 Amps written somewhere in the contract or is it what reads on the usually installed breaker ? Around here, the maximal power is determined in the contract (and enforced by the "connected" electrical meter/breaker that has a generous functioning margin.