On Sat, Jul 29, 2006 at 10:39:19PM +0200, Nathan Orenstein wrote: > Hello, > > I am confused by what my Internet bandwidth really is and how to measure it. > I noticed that I had some problems with slow Internet. I did not expect > this since > I am supposedly getting 2.5Gbps from Netvision.
I suppose you are supposedly getting 2.5Mbps, not Gbps. > I looked around on the Internet and found <http://www.abeltronica.com/> > which > allegedly allows me to measure my download and upload bandwidth. > Using the above I got as little as 500Mbps, up to 1.4Gbps as my > Internet download > speed, depending on time-of day and location to which the measurement > was made. > I then contacted Netvision who asked me to download a large file from > their site > <http://cables2.netvision.net>. This download "settled" at about > 250Mbytes/sec in > the first third of the download -- Netvision said this proves that the > 2.5Gbps is > indeed being provided. 250*8=2Mb/s, not 2.5. Are you sure that's all you get? > > I am wondering if the Netvision-supplied bandwidth for Internet > connections is really > in the order of 1.3-1.4 Gbps, maximum, and the extra bandwidth being > supplied (i.e, the > difference between 2.5Gbps and the bandwidth measured through > abeltronica) is > not really useful to me in accessing the Internet. > > I would appreciate any guidance, including a directed RTFM, on this subject. > Thank you. Having an RTFM about this might be very useful, and indeed there might be some on the net, but I do not know about any, so I'll briefly write a bit. What you get in the deals with ISPs is the speed between you and the ISPs nearest equipment (some router or so). This speed depends on various factors, including the deal you have with the carrier (Bezeq or Hot), the deal you have with the ISP, and maybe line quality etc. To measure this one, a simple test is indeed to download from a server on the ISP's LAN, which hopefully isn't too busy, and which means you should get close to the nominal speed. The rest is statistics, about which there are many sayings there is no need to repeat here. The ISP has various lines of various speeds, and people use it in varying degrees of loads etc. These lines connect to other ISPs etc. and eventually to the ISP who hosts the server you are interested in. As said above, the actual speed does depend on the speed of the ISPs's lines to "the world", but also on other factors. I guess the best way to proove that an ISP is cheap on you, and does not have fast enough links, is to find a foreign (non-Israeli) site that at the very same time is fast for someone on a different ISP and is slow for you. I do not know about abeltronica.com, but to get a meaningful result you have to do what I wrote above. If the other user (through a different ISP) also gets slow responses, it probably means your ISP is not the problem. -- Didi ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
