[Elecraft] Minimum bandwidth?

[Lynn W. Taylor, WB6UUT]

Ignore the faster speed, it's the slower speed on non-symmetric service.

The key question is always latency.

You can check out a VoIP calculator if you want to play the numbers, but 
most VoIP (and most cellular service) run around 8 kilobits/second.  No 
one offers IDSL service anymore, but it'd work beautifully at 128k 
(symmetric) with bandwidth to spare.

Where the problem lies is in the way the line is provisioned.

Where I live, there is only one provider that's worthwhile, the local 
telco.simply doesn't have enough bandwidth from the local central office 
to their first router.  The cable company doesn't admit they have 
service, even though there is a drop to the house.

That doesn't stop the Telco from selling 7 megabit service -- over and 
over and over.

So, sometimes I get 7 millisecond pings.  A lot of the time it's single 
digits, but every minute it'll jump over 500 msec.  Right now it's 
averaging about 250 msec, and the maximum has been 998 msec.

I've seen more than 4000 msec. (4 seconds).

Imagine trying to snag some amazing DX, and having the audio just stop 
for four seconds.

I could buy a faster wire, but they won't add bandwidth from the C.O. to 
the rest of the internet, so the latency would be the same.  I'd buy 
slower if they offered it.

73 -- Lynn

On 4/10/2016 2:59 AM, John Langdon wrote:
> At my remote transmitter site, I have 10 mbps 'down' and 1.2 mbps 'up' and
> everything works fine.