[Sorry, deleted something by mistake -- I had asked if there is evidence that an oversold beam functions poorly. Since we don't know what beams are oversold, if any, we can't really test, so all of this seems to be just speculation).
EDIT: other reasons for poor performance could be issues with specific servers (such as web acceleration), and gateway issues. Performance issues were present in several beams towards the beginning of Gen 5, and the beams were not even close to oversold. Congestion happens very easily too, especially at prime time, and it doesn't take that many people to clog the beam. If memory serves, without optimisation, clogging happens with just 64 subscribers using the system at the same time. I imagine optimisation raises this number, but since the amount of data to go around is not all that much, the quality can deteriorate pretty quickly, especially when those 64 or so people are all trying to stream.
maratsade wrote:Is there evidence that an oversold beam always functions poorly?
Of course not. But it is unlikely that an oversold beam will have an *average of many* recent tests above 25Mbps and therefore probable that the beam is not oversold, and so it looks to me to be evidence the beam is not oversold.
Of course, I laugh pretty hard at the idea of trying to figure out when I can run 50 tests when everyone else is asleep so as to make an oversold beam look good :-)
Maybe we can coin a term for it -- "salting a beam" haha
"I can run 50 tests when everyone else is asleep so as to make an oversold beam look good :-)"
LOL.
