[GRLUG] Letter from Comcast

[Bob Kline]

On Tue, Apr 23, 2013 at 11:24 AM, Adam Tauno Williams <
awilliam at whitemice.org> wrote:

> On Tue, 2013-04-23 at 10:40 -0400, Brad DeVries wrote:
> > Ben, I don't have an upper tier connection here in Hudsonville,
> > although I feel like it because I pay almost $60/mo, and I just ran 5
> > speedtests with the old DOCSIS 2 modem with vastly different results:
> > I'm not sure how accurate these test are
>
> These tests are approaching whichever axis is the 'meaningless' one.
>
> But I do generally take someone making a big deal out of a web-site
> 'speed test' as rather solid evidence that they do not know what they
> are talking about.  Once 'speed test' is mentioned one can comfortably
> return to one's beverage, you aren't going to miss anything.
>
> Meaningful performance metrics are hard, tedious, and full of caveats.
> Arbitrary, meaningless, and off-the-cuff metrics are easy to do ... but
> do little other than dilute the conversation and promote pomposity.
>
> A meaningful metric must at least be derived from a long-duration
> sampling as IP throughput tends to be quite wobbly - this is something a
> web browser cannot accomplish.  And to test 'the last mile' the remote
> node needs to be very very extremely close to, if not at, the other end
> of your 'last mile'.
>
> Gathering SNMP stats for your edge router is probably much more
> meaningful - what throughput does the interface actually see?  Does it
> hit a ceiling?
>
> And Define "speed" - throughput or latency?  And throughput to/from
> where for what traffic pattern?  Latency to/from where for what traffic
> pattern?  "speed" is a bogus layman's concept and itself is just not a
> technically useful term.
>

Throughput.  Obviously there will be time of
day, latency, and a server's bandwidth to
contend with.  No one reasonably expects
to get their nominal service speed to all points
on the globe at all times of the day.

It's the aggregate speed that matters to me.
If I have a large file to transfer, I could hardly
care whether its done at the nominal speed,
or in bursts that are 10X that speed.  d=r*t.
If I move a 100 MB file in a time that says
on average it was 100 Mbps, what else do I
really care about?

I'll guess that latency depends a lot on what
one is doing, but is similarly not under one's
direct control.

Yes, it would be nice if the Internet was a
very uniform beast, and that service speed
meant just that, 24/7.  But there are times
of the day, e.g., 4-6 AM EST, when demand
is low, and one gets their service speed and
then some.  I suppose the 1Gbps Google test
city users are occasionally surprised at what
that kind of speed actually means in practice.

Anyway, until and if the Internet becomes
more uniform, one takes some speed when
and where they can get it.  Technically useful
term?  Well, if one is suggesting there is no
such thing as actual transfer speed, then I
guess I'm simply left with the illusion there
is such a thing......


> If you're comfortable with your network's performance - then it has
> enough 'speed'.
>
> Uhm, ya, but one has to put a label on it
when they order a service.  "I just want a
speed I'm comfortable with" doesn't help
a whole lot.

   -- Bob



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