While researching who to buy which package for your internet connection, it must have caught your attention. Service providers advertise the speeds of the packages they sell as up to this many Megabits: not 16 Mb, but up to 16 Mb, not 35 Mb, but up to 35 Mb.
As if that were not enough, if you look carefully in places written in smaller fonts such as campaign terms and contracts, you will often see expressions such as “not guaranteed”, “subject to change” regarding speed.
Why does your service provider make such vague statements? Why can’t they give you a guarantee? Is there bad intention involved? Or is the statement based on physical or technical necessities?
First, let’s clarify the “What does 16 Mb, 35 Mb mean?” issue. To do this, we need to go back a little and start from the question of how you connect to the internet from your home. To simplify it, there is a chain like this:
1. Devices that use the internet in your home are connected to your router.
2. Your router is connected to your modem. (In most cases, they are the same device anyway)
3. Your modem is connected to the built-in box in your apartment.
4. The cables coming out of the built-in are connected to the DSLAM in a field cabinet or switchboard.
After the 5th DSLAM, things get a little more complicated, but ultimately, after passing through various places, your data arrives at a traffic delivery point.
6. After the traffic handover point, this journey continues in the reverse direction.
Your speed is affected by the total performance of all these connections. And also by the performance of your computer, phone, or your data-using device. While every link in this chain works very well, if even one of them fails, your internet will slow down. The responsibility of these links also lies with different people.
Here, what service providers say as 16 Mb, 35 Mb corresponds exactly to the 4 numbers above. In other words, this number is a prediction about the speed at which a modem connected to the built-in box in your building will meet the DSLAM. Since it is a prediction, they cannot say that the speed is this, they say up to this speed.
Where does this prediction come from?
The source of the prediction is essentially Türk Telekom’s service availability service. All service providers use this service when predicting what speed they can provide to an address with xDSL technology.
When this service is asked for an address, the service designs a virtual circuit to connect that address to the internet (I will connect it to this field cabinet, it is connected to this switchboard, that switchboard is connected to here) and makes a calculation by looking at the distances in this circuit, the capacity of the devices, information about the status of the cables and the real speed values of the connections implemented on that virtual circuit and says that the maximum speed that can be provided is this.
This predicted speed may not be accurate for several reasons:
- The distances, device database and other information used by the service may be outdated, incorrect or incomplete.
- The virtual circuit envisaged by the service may differ from the circuit occurring in real life.
- The address may appear in the wrong place (A code called BBK is used for telecom services, each independent unit has a code, but these codes may not always point to the right place).
- Even if everything is correct, there may be problems with the connection between the built-in and your modem that will affect the speed.
So it is not possible to say anything exactly even just for this part. To say anything exactly, it is necessary to connect a test device to that line and measure it. Only then is it possible to accurately see the physical capacity of the line between the DSLAM and the modem.
Due to these restrictions, service providers always say “up to” the speed you will receive. In fact, BTK, the regulatory body of the sector, requires the use of the expression “until” when offering internet packages for sale.
Physical capacity and speed of the line
So far, we have talked about the physical upper speed limit of the line. But that’s not the only limit to your speed. There are also administrative boundaries. All service providers set varying levels of rules that determine how fast their users can download and upload data. The first of these is the definition on DSLAM, and the other is generally the definition on BNG (Broadband Network Gateway, you can think of it as a kind of internet service provider router). The definition on the DSLAM physically determines the speed at which the DSLAM and the modem will connect to each other, and the definition on the BNG generally determines the maximum speed at which data can flow. The definition on BNG does not concern us for now (let’s add an ad here, on TurkNet the definition on BNG is always at least the upper limit of the physical connection, so it never slows you down). The definition on DSLAM is concerning.
The definition on the DSLAM has to be compatible with the physical capacity of the line (the 4th number we explained in detail above). If you want a line with a physical limit of 24 Mb to meet 35 Mb on the DSLAM, it cannot meet, that is, the DSL light on your modem does not turn on, or it meets but your connection constantly drops. But if you want a line that can meet at 35 Mb physically to meet at 24 Mbit, it will meet happily, no problem. In fact, most service providers do exactly this when they offer you 50, 35, 24, 16, 8 Mb options in the same house. They limit the speed of a line with a physical capacity of 50 Mb.
We do not do that at TurkNet. If your line uses ADSL technology, we define the highest speed allowed by the physical line, up to 16 Mb, if VDSL technology is used, up to 35 Mb. If you are on our active infrastructure, we do even better, we define the highest speed allowed by the physical line, up to 24 Mb for ADSL connections, up to 100 Mb for VDSL connections, on the DSLAM side. If you experience problems at these highest speeds, we gradually reduce the meeting speed of your line and bring it to a level where you will not experience connection problems .
How much is TurkNet worth?
While doing all these things, our hearts are a little fluttery. After all, we tell you 35, 16 etc. in big letters, and you generally expect that this will be my speed without looking at the “up to” side that we usually write next to it. We don’t have much chance of changing these expectations. That’s why we try very hard to tell you the speed you will actually get when we say “up to”. We measure ourselves in this regard as well. In other words, we look at what speed our customers say up to and what speed their modems meet.
Below you can see the actual modem speeds up to the “up to” speeds we tell our customers. In summary, the following result emerges:
- We provide this speed to 91% of the 35 Mb lines that our VDSL customers use the most, and we provide service to 3% of them at the lower speed (between 24-32 Mbps). Average dating speed is 32.1 Mbps. So, we think our report card here is good.
- The performance received by our customers using 50 and 75 Mbps is slightly lower. We can achieve the speeds we say 88% and 83% of the time, respectively, and we are far away from the speeds we say we are at about 7% of the time. But in the end, the average speed of our customers who we call 50 Mbps is 44.9, and the average speed of our customers who we call 75 Mbps is 66.6.
- These numbers are slightly worse for our customers using ADSL technology. We give 70% of them the speed we say, 17% we give the speed we say a little below the speed we say (8-12 Mbps), and 13% we give less than the speed we say.
| 16Mbps | 35Mbps | 50Mbps | 75Mbps | |
| Those who could not reach ‘until’ | 13% | 6% | 7% | 8% |
| Those approaching up to | 17% | 3% | 5% | 9% |
| Those who reached up to | 70% | 91% | 88% | 83% |
| Average Connection Speed (Mbps) | 13.2 | 32.1 | 44.9 | 66.6 |
The reason why our performance on the ADSL side seems a little lower is that while there are 1, 4, 8, 12, and 16 Mb packages on the market for ADSL, we offer a 16 Mb package to everyone. In other words, even though your line physically supports only 8 Mb, we consider ourselves unsuccessful when you cannot get 16 Mb speed. In VDSL, there is no such effect since we provide more intermediate speed.
Our performance in this regard is important to us. That’s why we will be sharing this data openly on our websites every month soon. When we say “until”, we say how much so that everyone can see. Be sure to ask other service providers as well. You can also find out the highest internet speed you can have in your region by performing an infrastructure inquiry .
