I think the issue is what does the measurement mean, and what is the relevance. To a consumer, the speed of your connection to the ISP is irrelevant (except maybe when uploading web pages to their site or downloading email). To the consumer, it is the measurement of throughput to the Internet. The various Internet bandwidth sites give the consumer a reasonable comparison, especially taken over time.
We we all had dialup ISPs, there were issues with shared modems, and the ratio of subscribers to modems. But, beyond that was how well an ISP was connected to the Internet. For years, one of the leading ISPs in the Boston area was able to get away with some relatively low speed connections. The local measurement is only relevant when diagnosing or reporting problems. If my ISP advertises 1.5Mbps (down) I expect to get approximately 1.5Mbps when downloading within that ISP's network, but if I consistently get 600Kbps from several different bandwidth sites, then I think it is time to red flag. On 18 Feb 2002 at 13:50, Derek D. Martin wrote: > It occurs to me that when the issue is as complicated as suggested by > the fact that so many intelligent people familiar with the topic can't > come to an agreement about how to perform meaningful tests, then the > results are probably not worth trying to obtain, unless there is a > significant investment of $$ tied to the outcome. -- Jerry Feldman Portfolio Partner Engineering 508-467-4315 http://www.testdrive.compaq.com/linux/ Compaq Computer Corp. 200 Forest Street MRO1-3/F1 Marlboro, Ma. 01752 ***************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the text 'unsubscribe gnhlug' in the message body. *****************************************************************
