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*Monthly rate discounted
$3.00 for Irvine Community Television Expanded Basic
customers
**Business packages
available to business customers
only
Generally, Irvine OnLine "over provisions" its
customers' modems. This is intended to provide an extra buffer
for speed performance. Irvine OnLine provisions its
customers' modems and engineers its network to ensure that its
customers can enjoy the speeds to which they subscribe.
However, Irvine OnLine does not guarantee that a customer will
actually achieve those speeds at all times. Without purchasing
an expensive, dedicated Internet connection, no Internet
Service Provider ("ISP") can guarantee a particular speed at
all times to a customer. Irvine OnLine advertises its speeds
as "up to" a specific level based on the tier of service to
which a customer subscribes.
The "actual" speed that a customer will
experience while using the Internet depends upon a variety of
conditions, many of which are beyond the control of an ISP
such as Irvine OnLine. These conditions include:
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Performance of a customer's computer,
including its age, processing capability, its operating
system, the number of applications running simultaneously,
and the presence of any adware and viruses.
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Type of connection between a customer's
computer and modem. For example, wireless connections
may be slower than direct connections into a router or
modem. Wireless connections also may be subject to greater
fluctuations, interference and congestion. Irvine OnLine
does not recommend wireless modem connections for use with
its higher speed tiers as many wireless connections do not
perform at the speeds delivered by these tiers.
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The distance packets travel (round trip
time of packets) between a customer's computer and its
final destination on the Internet, including the number and
quality of the networks of various operators in the
transmission path. The Internet is a "network of networks."
A customer's connection may traverse the networks of
multiple providers before reaching its destination, and the
limitations of those networks will most likely affect the
overall speed of that Internet connection.
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Congestion or high usage levels at the
website or destination. If a large number of visitors
are accessing a site or particular destination at the same
time, your connection will be affected if the site or
destination does not have sufficient capacity to serve all
of the visitors efficiently.
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Gating of speeds or access by the website
or destination. In order to control traffic or
performance, many websites limit the speeds at which a
visitor can download from their site. Those limitations will
carry through to a customer's connection.
This is the reason that Irvine OnLine, like all
other ISPs, advertises speeds as "up to" a particular level,
and does not guarantee them.
Speed Tests
Irvine OnLine offers its customers the
ability to test the speeds that they are receiving on Irvine
OnLine's network from the customer's computer to a test site.
Speed tests are heavily dependent on a customer's home network
configuration, modem, and computers, and therefore do not
reflect the performance of the Irvine OnLine network
only. We have provided links to a few of these sites
below for your reference. Please note, however, that all speed
tests have biases and flaws. Each of these tests measures
limited aspects of an ISP's speed and therefore must be seen
as a guide rather than definitive measurements of
performance.
Latency
Latency is another measurement of Internet
performance. Latency is the time delay in transmitting or
receiving packets on a network. Latency is primarily a
function of the distance between two points of transmission,
but also can be affected by the quality of the network or
networks used in transmission. Latency is typically measured
in milliseconds, and generally has no significant impact on
typical everyday Internet usage. As latency varies based on
any number of factors, most importantly the distance between a
customer's computer and the ultimate Internet destination (as
well as the number and variety of networks your packets
cross), it is not possible to provide customers with a single
figure that will define latency as part of a user
experience.
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