Morning Mike,
The *New Zealand Government* don't use speedtest.net as a benchmark.
Our Government uses a consulting company to provide a range of tests
that address the issues you're talking about and benchmarks are
published each year. http://www.comcom.govt.nz/broadband-reports
The user and network communities are not 100% happy with the way this
testing is done either.
http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=49&topicid=73698 Some
providers are know to fudge the results by putting QoS on the test paths.
http://weathermap.karen.net.nz/ is a New Zealand academic project that
shows their network performance in real time. This is a very useful
site for demonstrating the sort of tools that Governments should be
looking for when doing performance measuring.
Recent work done by Jared Kells, in Australia, on consumer level network
performance shows a very interesting picture (pictures are best for
political people).
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1579142 Kells
demonstrates that providers deliver very different results for national
and international sites. Kells provides a set of Open Source tools to
do your own testing.
http://www.truenet.co.nz - John Butt - is a commercial start up
providing another range of testing metrics which the user community at
www.geekzone.co.nz seem to be much happier with as a proper indication
of network performance. I have talked with John personally and can
attest that the testing is fairly robust and addresses issues that
you've raised. http://www.truenet.co.nz/how-does-it-work
The recent upgrades of www.telstraclear.co.nz HFC network from DOCIS2.0
(25/2 max) to DOCIS3.0 (100/10 testing introduction speed) presented a
range of challenges for John's testing. http ramp up speeds to 100mbit
cause impact on test results, so John had to change the way they were
testing to get a better performance presentation.
Internode in Australia have learnt the hard way recently that consumer
expectation of their new NBN FTTH network needs to be managed
carefully. As a result of some very poor media press over the
performance of an education site recently installed in Tasmania, they
have engaged in quite a bit of consumer education around network
performance.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/governments-broadband-not-up-to-speed-at-tasmanian-school/story-e6frg6nf-1225961150410
- http://whrl.pl/Rcyrhz -
<http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/user/6258>Simon Hackett - Internode CEO
responds.
*Speedtest.net* will only provide a BIR/PIR measure, and not CIR, which
is not an indicator of service quality.
In New Zealand SpeedTest.net is used extensively with a number of
hosting servers. The information is fundamentally flawed as you have no
control over what testing the end user performs. In my case I can
product three different tests from a 15/2 HFC service and get 3
different results.
http://www.speedtest.net/result/1133639492.png - Test 1 - The
application has identified that I am located in Christchurch New Zealand
so has selected a Christchurch based server for testing
(www.snap.co.nz). As you can see the results show ~7.5/2.1mbits/s.
http://www.speedtest.net/result/1133642520.png - Test 2 - This time I've
chosen the CityLink (www.citylink.co.nz) server in Wellington New
Zealand. ~6.2/1.97bits/s.
http://www.speedtest.net/result/1052386636.png - Test 3 - from 12/12/10
shows ~15.1/2.15. This was tested to an Auckland, New Zealand server.
I did run a set of tests this morning to the Auckland servers as well,
however they are all being limited to the same numbers as the
Christchurch test (1) now. None of the servers are on my providers
network and performance is governed by the peering/hand overs between
the networks.
Christchurch - Wellington - 320km - Christchurch - Auckland - 750km
straight line distances according to Google Earth.
The HFC service I'm using will deliver a through put of 15/2 for some
time even at peek usage times when pulling content off the providers own
network.
Ok, that's enough for now. I hope this helps and let me know if you
need any more assistance.
Cheers Don
