[LINK] Net firms quizzed on speed limits - BBC News

[Richard Chirgwin]

Ahh, that old saw again.

Things that don't run to their maximum rated capacity all the time (off 
the top of my head):
Cars (can do 160 km/h, don't)
Computers
Ethernet (can run gigabits/second, but most connections are idle most of 
the time)
Wireless Ethernet (sold on line speed, perform by "maximum throughput", 
mostly idle most of the time)
...and so on.

The problem is: what *do* you sell broadband on? The "minimum" speed may 
be zero. Or realistically, the average per-user throughput is in tens of 
Kbps.

Further: the "speed test" performance may not even reflect badly on your 
service provider; there may well be congestion between you and the speed 
test; or the speed tester site is under heavy load, or...

For example: on the office ADSL2+, the maximum sync speed when I had a 
service provider technician visit during installation was near 20 Mbps. 
The provider's own Web pages loaded at roughly 16 Mbps. Stuff from 
people who peered with that provider, roughly 10 Mbps. From non-peers, 
anything down to 3 Mbps.

So what's a reasonable measure for broadband "speed"?

RC

Sylvano wrote:
> We've all seen the distance-from-exchange charts....  
>
> The lead and the penultimate paragrahs from the BBC report at:
>
>   Net firms quizzed on speed limits
>   http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7037278.stm
>
> "Bosses at six of the UK's top net providers are being asked to explain why consumers do not get the broadband speeds firms advertise."
>
> "In mid-September, Computeractive magazine revealed a survey which showed that 62% of the 3,000 readers who carried out speed tests got less than half the top broadband speed advertised by their provider."
>
> It probably should be like grocery products, where the thing you buy has an advertised minimum net weight, and if it's less you return it and get a pallette back with an apology letter ;-) 
>
> Is anyone aware of any similar survey in Australia?
>
>  Sylvano
>
>  Gnomon Publishing
>  http://www.gnomon.com.au/
>
>  ---
>
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