Nothing ruins a good movie like a spinning wheel appearing in the middle of the screen when the buffering kicks in.

Well, load shedding can also wreck any plans of a night in watching telly, but then you just have to plan ahead and download what you want so that your laptop can fill in during the two or so hours of darkness.

I have heard rumours of people who simply pass that time chatting to one another sans technology, but that seems near on impossible.

Load shedding aside, not all internet connections and contracts are created equal, and there are some important terms to understand before you sign on the dotted line with a new internet service provider (ISP).

We asked RSAWEB to run us through some of the basics, starting with throttling:

This is when all your traffic is equally slowed down. An ISP will usually do this when the network is under strain and there is an unusually high amount of traffic on your line or if you’ve exceeded your fair usage policy (FUP) limits.

You can think of it as having a stricter speed limit imposed on a highway.

Look, speed limits on a highway I can deal with, but I don’t want someone else deciding what constitutes fair usage of the internet. Let me browse in peace, heathens.

Next up is shaping:

This refers to different speed limits on different types of traffic (video, email, downloads, torrents etc.). An ISP would usually do this to ensure that everyone on the network has a great experience by ensuring that more pertinent things like video chats and VoIP calls are prioritised when bandwidth is limited.

This would be the equivalent to having different lanes for different types of vehicles, each with their own speed limit.

Finally, there’s contention ratio:

This is the number of users sharing the same network capacity. The lower the contention ratio the higher the quality of service. A 10:1 contention ratio means that up to 10 broadband customers are sharing the same bandwidth at any one time. If a line is uncontended, it means that there is nobody else on that line.

Think of it as the number of lanes available to the traffic on the road – the more cars there are in each lane, the slower traffic moves.

Sorry for the Capetonians out there who find the traffic analogies triggering – we suffer together.

Whatever internet you’re choosing for your home or business, just be sure you’ve done your homework on the above terms.

With RSAWEB, only two of their 100+ fibre packages have a FUP, and the rest are not shaped or throttled in any way (unless the network is placed under huge strain).

In addition, any package over 20mbps qualifies for the load shedding promotion (while stocks last):

That way, you don’t have to worry about going without internet during load shedding, and being forced into actual conversations with the people you live with.

If you want to find out more about their range of packages, see RSAWEB’s site, ring them on 087 470 0000, or mail ftth@rsaweb.net.

[source:rsaweb]