Contention isn’t what it appears to be…..

Enterprise satellite internet providers have long touted the importance of the lower contention ratios their various plans offered. Many very knowledgeable IT professionals have long used this “ratio” as the yardstick to measure quality by. Anything under 25:1 contention ratio has traditionally been considered as “Enterprise Quality” and when you get down to 10:1 contention or lower, well that should be a Golden satellite internet connection, right?…..well, not so fast there….it sure doesn’t hold up as a good way to measure the quality or speed of your connectivity by my experience!

The BIG problem with contention ratios ( basically, the number of accounts connected on the same circuit together) as a measuring stick of quality is knowing the quantity of bandwidth used by those “contending” for it. You might have a better quality connection on a 40:1 circuit of light browsing & email users than you would with a 10:1 circuit of power users! What I am seeing more and more is a very low contention circuit (in theory) actually being sold to say 10 accounts…..but each account has 15 users …….if all users are on at the same time, the experience for all is pretty slow. A ISP can’t really control the number of users connected behind a router at any of these accounts.

A network that delivers close to what is promised has to be carefully loaded using some customers from different time zones, light users and heavy users blended together across time zones and a willingness to “just say no” to certain types of customers based on what they say they will do vs what they end up doing once connected.

Until we reach the day that satellite internet bandwidth is as cheap as terrestrial circuits (a day I don’t expect to come any time soon), power users will either need to “pony up” for a dedicated circuit or curtail their bandwidth hunger or find a different provider who will put up with their appetite.