nanog mailing list archives

Re: I recommend dslreports.com/speedtest these days (was Speedtest.net not accessible in Chrome due to deceptive ads)


From: Jim Gettys <jg () freedesktop org>
Date: Fri, 22 Jul 2016 16:31:28 -0400

On Fri, Jul 22, 2016 at 4:18 PM, Baldur Norddahl <baldur.norddahl () gmail com>
wrote:

Den 22. jul. 2016 21.34 skrev "Jim Gettys" <jg () freedesktop org>:


So it is entirely appropriate in my view to give even "high speed"
connections low grades; it's telling you that they suck under load
​, like when your kid is downloading a video (or uploading one for their
friends); your performance (e.g. web surfing) can go to hell in a
hand-basket despite having a lot of bandwidth on the
connection. For most use, I'll take a 20Mbps link without bloat to a
200Mbps one with a half second of bloat any
​ ​
day.
​

I will expect that high speed links will have little bloat simply because
even large buffers empty quite fast.


​Unfortunately, that is often/usually not the case.​

​  The buffering has typically scaled up as fast/faster than the bandwidth
has, in my observation. You can have as much/more bloat on a higher
bandwidth line as a low bandwidth line.

That's why I always refer to buffering in seconds​, not bytes, unless I'm
trying to understand how the identical equipment will behave at differing
bandwidths.

The worst is usually someone taking modern equipment and then running it at
low speed: e.g. a gigabit switch being used at 100Mbps will generally be
10x worse than the old equipment it replaces (at best).

                     - Jim


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