The ISP Bandwidth Conspiracy

Be cautious with the wording of any highspeed Internet Access contract and ask what they mean by "average bandwidth of X b/s".

Sometimes it means they lower the max bandwidth per user (at the ISP level) during peak hours in order to 'more fairly' distribute possible usage (har! har!). Rather than everyone suckling what they can from the ISP's metaphorical teat - the Right Way.

If all connections were TCP/IP, packet loss would not be that big a problem; since a lot of people are using streaming protocols that use UDP these days, though, routers can become saturated very easily.