Bit-rate checking

Edwin, I think you were referring to bit rate (measured in kbit/s or Mbit/s), rather than bandwidth (kHz or MHz) so I have edited the above posting accordingly.

Linkstar,  Hughes and iDirect systems are star networks and typically have a single outlink of between 1 and 40 Mbit/s.  This outlink or download capacity is shared by all sites, there may be anything from 5 sites or several thousand sites.   The amount of download capacity available to each site will be controlled by the hub router traffic management system.  The way this works varies according to the QoS configuration and each service provider has their own ideas.  It can vary. Examples: Dedicated capacity 10 sites on a 1 Mbit/s outlink each paying $700 per month and having exactly 100kbit/s capacity.  100 sites at $70 per month, all dynamically sharing the 1 Mbit/s, each site getting up to 1 Mbit/s at times.  Mixtures of these two extremes are normal with fair-access-policies to assign capacity on-average in relation to the amount paid.      

For a particular network you need to talk to the hub operator and discuss how their traffic QoS works.

I know Bentley Walker have a public portal to their HX system FAP status where you can see your traffic.  They are also developing a portal for TooWay which has one of the most complex, and maybe most fair, FAP systems. See some example beta Tooway FAP portal displays showing traffic in last hour, last 4 hours, last day, last week, last 4 weeks.

I am keen to encourage this kind of development so that end-users gain confidence that they are getting what they are paying for.

I would be interested to hear of traffic displays of other networks so that users can verify their useage on LinkStar and iDirect.

best regards, Eric.