Does a poor broadband connection use more data than a good one?

JayG · ‎30-10-2011

Do all the retransmissions and additional overheads like interleaving which poor/noise-affected connections often suffer from increase the traffic and hence the metered data consumption compared with a 'clean' one?

(Just wondered - it's been a boring week and a spectacularly dull and foggy Sunday! )

RPMozley · ‎04-11-2011

It might do, depends where the retransmission is coming from. Most errors will be resent from your local exchange so they won't count in your ISP usage.

That's RPM to you!!

Townman · ‎22-08-2007

I believe I’m corrected to say it also depends on protocols. IPv4 and IPv6 handle error correction differently.

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ejs · ‎10-06-2010

@Townman wrote:
I believe I’m corrected to say it also depends on protocols. IPv4 and IPv6 handle error correction differently.

Could you elaborate on that? I didn't think IPv4 or IPv6 really handles any error correction.

@RPMozley - I don't think anything will be resent from your local exchange. With G.INP retransmission on FTTC, then things will be resent from the FTTC DSLAM in the cabinet. Otherwise, anything resent has to go all the way through your ISP from the Internet where it originally came from.

To answer the original question, I think for very light usage, having to occasionally reload a webpage that didn't local properly on a poor broadband connection, or relying on TCP to organise resending data, might result in more data usage. The poor broadband connection would slow things down though, so it wouldn't be able to use as much data in total as someone using a good connection could.

RPMozley · ‎04-11-2011

I did read here a long while ago that there was a small buffer at the exchange, for ADSL.

Fibre wasn't in my thinking at all, so probably should have mentioned what I was referring to. But easier to see that only after the fact.

That's RPM to you!!

ejs · ‎10-06-2010

There is no such buffer at the exchange for most ADSL services. There is no protocol to organise retransmissions from such a buffer, unless you've got G.INP on your ADSL. Sky LLU might actually have G.INP (or even PhyR) on their ADSL, but others don't.