The competition that occurs when the demand for a shared communication channel exceeds its available capacity. In shared-medium networks like Wi-Fi or early Ethernet, this results in collisions, packet loss, and increased latency. Network engineers manage this by implementing access control protocols or increasing bandwidth to lower the contention ratio.
Heard on the job
The high latency on the guest Wi-Fi is purely due to contention, since we have fifty devices fighting for one access point.
Insider tip
Internet service providers often sell residential connections with a high contention ratio (like 50:1), meaning 50 households share the same backhaul capacity.