If its being used as a speed test, its important that it is capable of giving an accurate speed test. Its better to have no speed test than to have one that makes our network look bad. Matt, made some good points about web apps not being fast enough to do accurate speed tests.
We wrote a tool that used icmp to do speed tests. but the the problem with that was that many of our routers were set to limit number of Ping packets for DOS protection. So although wecould use it, it was not good for our end users. Its critical to have both a TCP and Non-TCP test. They tell two completely different things. UDP tests tell whether your network has the capacity to pass the speed tested. TCP tests factor in the end user's experience considering windows size, packet loss, distance, etc. Its also important to consider what level customers this tool will be used for. 1, 2,5,10,100 mbps customers. And its relevent how large an ISP's network is, to know what the distance will be. So correct windows size can be chosen that would allow full speed. If an ISP sells 50 mbps circuit, poor results might be redendered of hte speed test was designed for 1mbps customers. So it might be good to have a statement of what speed range the speed tool is capable of testing up to. It also might be good to have a "help" or "more info" button, that will gie a few paragrahs about interpretting speed results, and reasons why it might be slow. On the speed test, disclose where that is getting tested to. Tom DeReggi RapidDSL & Wireless, Inc IntAirNet- Fixed Wireless Broadband ----- Original Message ----- From: "Matt Liotta" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "WISPA General List" <wireless@wispa.org> Sent: Thursday, June 12, 2008 3:19 PM Subject: Re: [WISPA] User check program > > On Jun 12, 2008, at 4:08 PM, Larry Yunker wrote: > >> (1) For purposes of Deployment, this program requires .Net 2.0. The >> install >> program will check for the existence of .Net 2.0 on the target >> machine and >> will attempt to install it if it is not already installed. >> Unfortunately, >> .Net 2.0 won't install on any machine older than Windows98 and won't >> install >> on WinXP machines until Service Pack 2.0 or newer is installed. So, >> the >> .Net requirement is somewhat of a pain. The Installation program >> will work >> easily on machines that already have .Net or on machines that don't >> have >> .Net but have all of the prerequisites for installing .Net. >> Hopefully that >> will be the majority of installs?!?@ >> > It also means the program doesn't work with no Windows computers, > which are increasingly gaining market share. > >> But, in an ideal world, we'd like to avoid installing .Net, so the >> question >> is this: does anyone know how to compile and deploy a Visual Basic >> application without requiring .Net to be installed on the target >> machine? >> Or if that's not possible, does anyone have any suggestions as to >> other >> visual languages which DO NOT USE .NET and which might be used for >> future >> ports of this application. >> > Java. > >> (2) One of the "features" of this application is a speed test. As >> you might >> imagine, sometimes speed tests will fail to complete (due to >> congestion, >> poor connection, etc.). For this reason, it becomes imperative that I >> create some sort of timeout mechanism so that the attempted upload or >> download halts with no results if the test is "taking too long". >> I'm using >> the webclient.uploadfile and webclient.downloadfile methods to >> accomplish >> these tests. Does anyone know whether there is a way to force this >> method >> to halt upon a preset timeout? If not, does anyone have a good >> example of >> code to place a process in background in Visual Basic? >> > Generally speaking, webclient is not going to be ideal for speed > testing. You are going to want to operate at a lower layer. I would > suggest UDP or TCP. > > -Matt > > > > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > WISPA Wants You! Join today! > http://signup.wispa.org/ > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org > > Subscribe/Unsubscribe: > http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless > > Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WISPA Wants You! Join today! http://signup.wispa.org/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
