On Tue, Feb 16, 2016 at 11:01:23AM -0800, John Jason Jordan wrote: > My computers are both Xubuntu 14.04.3, up to date. There may be > something built in that would tell me what I want to know, but I could > use a clue what to look for. > > Suggestions?
When do you test? Netflix uses, on average, 40% of US internet bandwidth. Usage is never "average" - at peak TV times, and in some places, Netflix hogs almost all capacity. They demand video quality low-latency service, through many choke points and congested fibers, so the rest of us must wait behind their supposedly more-important traffic. The internet is indeed a "net", many segments and switches between you and the server you are talking to. Any one of those segments and switches can be slow or choked up. The internet is not optimized for video delivery, just as a bike lane is not optimized for 18-wheel freight trucks. Try running the test on a weekday morning, early, and see if the results vary. Also, the best way to estimate what you are actually using is "ifconfig". You may have bandwidth hogs you've underestimated or don't know about. I wrapped ifconfig in a little perl script running on my firewall machine. The script asks ifconfig for send and receive byte counts, waits 50 seconds, then collects them again and does the math. You can do the same with: ifconfig ; sleep 100 ; ifconfig "sleep 100" takes longer but makes the math easier. Look at the numbers for "RX bytes" and "TX bytes." I see the Netflix Effect with my 15/5 Frontier FIOS; on Friday and Saturday nights, I read books instead of using the net. If my wife must answer the internet phone from her office (doctor on call), she reroutes it to her cell phone. TV seems to be more important than life-saving phone calls. Various websites like "internet speed test" are usually too optimistic; they connect to test servers with good bandwidth and low congestion. But most let you choose the test server. I often select a test server in Boston or Atlanta or Miami to test the whole internet, not just my last mile of it. Keith -- Keith Lofstrom [email protected] _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
