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I recently switched from an ADSL to a fiber connection and was surprised to see that the bandwidth is asymmetric (1 Gbps down / 250 Mbps up).
While this is understandable in ADSL, I do not understand why fiber at home is asymmetric as well? It is not a limitation of the technology (I have symmetric fiber at the office, and always had)
This is probably more for economic and marketing by ISP than any technical issues... the average user uploads far less than they download, so the ISP can negotiate better deals if they have to purchase less bandwidth even in one direction. Besides, providing an infrastructure where thousands of people can upload and download at GB speads is expensive, so they put their money into the most efficient and customer demanded portion. – acejavelin – 2016-04-24T14:52:15.353
@acejavelin: I was thinking about that as well but in my case i) the infrastructure belongs to the ISP ii) people, as you mentioned, will mostly download and equipment-wise there is no difference so they do not gain anything by limiting the upload. Additionally, the usage of such bandwidth in the vast majority of the cases will be insignificant for home users. – WoJ – 2016-04-24T14:57:24.560
Trust me, I worked for a FTTH carrier for years, your ISP pays for bandwidth as well, and although they probably own their own network, but don't own all the infrastructure involved (they hand off to bigger upstream carrier or inter-connect)... This is a marketing and economics thing, not typically a hardware issue. – acejavelin – 2016-04-24T15:02:22.563
@acejavelin: maybe. My ISP is the largest one in the country and is the one to sell its infrastructure to others. They own the fiber and the equipment (and have to make it available to other due to regulations). – WoJ – 2016-04-24T15:14:00.357
The Internet isn’t restricted to your country, however. ;) – Daniel B – 2016-04-24T15:49:10.870
@DanielB: where did I say that? My question is about the reason of asymmetric bandwidth for fiber. acejavelin mentioned one possibility, which does not fit well with the case of my provider, so I am still looking for a reason. – WoJ – 2016-04-24T15:55:53.043
Most traffic crosses borders. So unless you’re a customer of AT&T, your ISP pays for it. Because it isn’t a Tier 1 network operators. – Daniel B – 2016-04-24T16:16:46.727
@DanielB: yes, I understand that. And, in that context, the fact that my ISP pays for traffic is clear as well (it is a Tier 1 provider, but would need to pay anyway for local peering). This does not explain the asymmetry in the bandwidth, particularly because download >> upload and what is limited is upload (which would not be used anyway, even if not limited) – WoJ – 2016-04-24T16:23:11.493
Not necessarily. Verizon Fios is symmetric. Asymmetric setups reduce the amount of bandwidth required for the uplink, which increases available capacity for everyone.
– bwDraco – 2016-04-24T19:46:50.117