[SATLUG] OT: Network Analysis

[Brad Knowles]

On 6/3/07, scs at worldlinkisp.com wrote:

>  Is there a network guru that can tell me what, if
>  anything my speed test results are indicating
>  (besides things  are slower than He_l.  The following
>  test were run with speakeasy in Dallas and all
>  figures are kbps (kilo bits per second) not kBps.

If you're in San Antonio and you're testing against servers in 
Dallas, Seattle, Chicago, or elsewhere, then your test results are 
pretty much useless right off the bat -- you have no idea how many 
providers may be between those two points and may have congested WAN 
links, congested routers or switches at various facilities, etc....

>  My Wireless DSL provider (wireweb . net /
>  207.136.42.50) seems to have a bent pipe, or has
>  moved me to a bad network.  Started Friday morning
>  and continues.  Tonight at 23:00 Chicago was 64 kbps
>  and Seattle 72 kbps.

If you want to test your local network provider, you've got to choose 
remote endpoint servers that are *just* outside the network of your 
provider, and almost certainly located there in the same city. 
Beyond that point, you're into testing the Internet itself, and that 
would be like running your air conditioner and leaving the door open 
so that you can try to cool down the whole block.


Besides, for network testing, you normally only care about the 
chokepoints and overall throughput, and you're not going to find any 
typical testing tools available to you that will help you in this 
regard.

You really need to be running tools like pathrate and pathload on 
both the server and client sides (so you have to control both ends, 
or have someone on the other end who is willing to run a co-operative 
program on your behalf).  See the CAIDA page at 
<http://www.caida.org/tools/taxonomy/performance.xml> for a selection 
of programs in this area.

-- 
Brad Knowles <brad at shub-internet.org>, Consultant & Author
LinkedIn Profile: <http://tinyurl.com/y8kpxu>
Slides from Invited Talks: <http://tinyurl.com/tj6q4>

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