[LINK] A non-sensationalist look at Australian internet speeds

[Karl Auer]

On Tue, 2016-03-29 at 13:38 +1100, Paul Brooks wrote:
> What I'm getting at is that, over the course of a month or 6 months, 
> the average broadband link utilisation is less than 1%. Sure there 
> are instantaneous peaks when somebody is actually trying to do
> something, but most of the time the link is idle.

So provided there is enough bandwidth for the times when nobody is
doing anything, we're OK? Alright, that was mischievous :-) But
seriously, the only bandwidth that matters is the bandwidth you have
(or don't have) when you need it. It is IMHO disingenuous (and I'm not
putting these words into your mouth) to suggest that as long as the
average utilisation is low, we have enough bandwidth.

There are lots of things that don't require lots of bandwidth, because
they are not time-critical. Email is the canonical example, who cares
how long it takes to arrive as long as it gets there? But anything that
wastes a person's time with waiting is a problem. The canonical example
there is video (or voice); people are very intolerant of lag and jitter
in those applications. Gaming too - and I dare anyone over 30 to say
"but gaming doesn't REALLY matter does it?" - especially if they are
also insisting that grand finals and B-grade movies be delivered
perfectly smoothly, or expect telepresence or VR to be a thing.

> And all this breaks down on low speed links that some are lumbered
> with

But Paul, just about everyone IS lumbered with just such a connection!
That's the problem! And the second problem, coming up like a freight
train, is that what people consider "low speed" is getting higher all
the time.

> around the 1 Mbps level

Which EVERY ADSL user has on their outbound link. Mostly about half
that.

> but these don't form a significant fraction of the ABS stats.

That might be a problem right there.

> Confusing the two things, or assuming that you have to double one to
> double the other, is a common fallacy.

Not confusing either. But 99% of users could not give a flying hockey
puck about what's going on when they are NOT filling their link or NOT
going over quota.

Technically, data volume and bandwidth are not related. In practice -
oh yes they very are! All you have to do to see this is stop looking at
continuous periods of very low usage as if they formed a meaningful
part of the calculations.

Regards, K.

-- 
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Karl Auer (kauer at biplane.com.au)
http://www.biplane.com.au/kauer
http://twitter.com/kauer389

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