www.auctionsieve.com

[jjforb]

I have recently switched from a DSL connection to Cable, which is supposed to be faster, however it is my perception that AuctionSieve updates the watch list slower with cable than it did with DSL. I have checked for new updates and my copy of AuctionSieve is up to date. Any thoughts on why it seems to run slower? Thank you.

[Randy Treadway]

This is the explanation I have been told.

With DSL you are "allocated" a certain bandwidth, which you have subscribed for. In my case, it is 700 mps. In theory, you should get close to that at any time of the day or night, any day of the week. This is because once you've been allocated that bandwidth, the pathway is >dedicated< to you, with your own private copper wire to the nearest major junction box. You should be able to run a bandwidth test and get a result that is not too much lower than that. And that should be enough to run things like live streaming video at a good frame rate. That's theoretical of course. In reality, ANY point in the internet backbone can cause slowdowns, not just your local connection.

Now consider cable. In theory the bandwidth "allocation" is much greater than DSL. BUT....the catch is that you have to share that with your nearby neighbors who subscribe to the same cable service. So if a lot of your neighbors are on the net via cable at the same time as you are, and they're all trying to do high-bandwidth stuff like downloading music or streaming video, you can see a very noticable degradation in response performance, to the point that it is quite a bit slower than DSL. On the other hand, if you are on the net using your cable modem at 3am when most of your neighbors are sawing logs, you might get performance that is screaming fast.

That's the explanation that I was TOLD, mind you. I'm sure you techies out there will provide a better explanation if the one I was told is less than accurate.