[AusNOG] Speedtest results

Tue Dec 6 17:55:03 EST 2016

When explaining this to users I normally use the freeway analogy to try and
explain it.

In essence, while the speed limit of the Monash is 80km/h, you'll be lucky
to get that speed during rush hour, because everyone is on it and the road
is busy. If you measure your own average speed it will be well below the
limit in these cases.

In the case of speed test, their traffic is stuck in the same way. You have
a road that can support a certain amount of traffic, and there is already
cars on it thanks to the other devices/users on your local network. Speed
test tests speed by trying to cram as much traffic as possible through in a
set length of time, and it does not take into account the other traffic
already there.

If you could measure that other traffic (and there are tools to do this
depending on service provider, some routers even have a traffic meter in
them), adding it to the result of the speed test would get you to the total
throughput.

Most users I've explained this to seemed to understand, but your mileage
may vary....

On Tue, Dec 6, 2016 at 5:44 PM, <russell at central-data.net> wrote:

> Hi Paul,
>
> This has always been very difficult to explain to customers without some
> metric to use as a base.
> I setup cacti and provide this to the customer as needed so that they can
> see how much bandwidth they are using throughout the day which can really
> help when they complain about speeds at times in the day or question why a
> speedtest can only get to 5mb instead of 20mbit as they are already using
> the rest.
>
> Others may want more realtime data or more specific metrics which other
> tools \ routers would provide but cacti has performed well for this purpose
> with low overhead in the past.
>
> hope this helps
>
>
> Kind Regards,
>
> Russell Brooks
>
>
> Central Data Systems Pty Ltd
> 88 Havelock Street, West Perth, WA 6005
> Phone: 08 9481 4010
>
> www.central-data.net
>
> ------------------------------
> *From: *paul+ausnog at oxygennetworks.com.au
> *To: *"AusNOG Mailing List" <ausnog at ausnog.net>
> *Sent: *Tuesday, December 6, 2016 2:38:21 PM
>
> *Subject: *Re: [AusNOG] Speedtest results
>
> Sorry guys, I think maybe my point wasn’t explained correctly.
>
>
>
> We are an ISP, we provide a service, let’s say at 20M for the customer.
>
> The service is delivered at 20M so there are no issues, however when the
> customer does a speed test at 12:35PM for example they see 4.8Mbit/s down
> and 12Mbit/s up (pie in the sky figures of course)
>
> So then they complain that they aren’t getting 20M because the speed test
> says they aren’t, even though 5 staff are using you tube and they have
> email coming through and other typical internet traffic which is consuming
> some of their bandwidth.
>
>
>
> So what I am looking for is some simple layman diagram which shows some
> traffic and a link and what happens when you do a speed test whilst there
> is other traffic on that link to show that they will never get full speed
> on a speed test whilst they are actually using the link.
>
>
>
> Thoughts ?
>
>
>
> Thanks
>
> Paul
>
>
>
> *From:* AusNOG [mailto:ausnog-bounces at lists.ausnog.net] *On Behalf Of *Paul
> Wilkins
> *Sent:* Tuesday, 6 December 2016 12:55 PM
> *To:* AusNOG Mailing List
> *Subject:* Re: [AusNOG] Speedtest results
>
>
>
> If the customer can never get 20Mbps from anywhere, at 3:00am, you would
> definitely have grounds of appeal to the ACCC or the telecoms ombudsman.
>
> But otherwise, we're back to the problem of referring the problem to
> someone else, in this case lawyers, to decide what your offer of
> stoichometric service guarantees actually means. And no one is offering end
> to end performance guarantees on a transit service.
>
> Kind regards
>
> Paul Wilkins
>
>
>
> On 6 December 2016 at 12:36, Mark Smith <markzzzsmith at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> On 6 Dec. 2016 12:09, "Paul Wilkins" <paulwilkins369 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I don't think a diagramme is going to explain the complex stoichometric
> behaviour of a packet switched network where traffic metrics -
> throughput/latency/packet loss - are characterised by the complex
> interrelationships of multiple time domain congested queues within a
> distributed network.
>
> I rather think that rather than addressing the fundamental ontological
> question "what is network performance", the inclination, across the
> industry, is to reach for a diagramme, that says the performance isn't my
> problem, it's someone else's problem. Frustratingly or perhaps
> conveniently, without ever actually explaining what performance is, you
> will never identify the causes of performance problems. So the answer to
> the customer remains, there is no problem, or if there is, it's not our
> responsibility and there's nothing we can do about it.
>
>
>
> It's your responsibility to ensure the customer can get what you're
> selling them.
>
>
>
> If the OP's customer can never ever get 20Mbps from anywhere, then I'd
> think that is in breach of ACCC consumer guarantees, specifically, for a
> Service,
>
>
>
>    - be fit for the purpose or give the results that you and the business
>    had agreed to
>
>
>
> https://www.accc.gov.au/consumers/consumer-rights-
> guarantees/consumer-guarantees
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Kind regards
>
> Paul Wilkins
>
>
>
> On 5 December 2016 at 13:25, paul+ausnog at oxygennetworks.com.au <
> paul+ausnog at oxygennetworks.com.au> wrote:
>
> Hi All, many of us would be familiar with the complaints from customers
> about not getting the speeds they pay for, this doesn’t really matter if
> it’s ADSL, NBN, Ethernet, whatever really.
>
>
>
> We have found that as with most people the average customer expects their
> 20M Ethernet connection to still deliver 20M from their test on
> speedtest.net even when people are using it and consuming it, so I was
> wondering if anybody has come across a diagram in their travels which
> depicts the capacity of an Internet connection and shows data traversing
> that so that we can give customers a visual representation of what is
> actually happening on their connection when they do their speed test.
>
>
>
> I have had a bit of a scour around already but can’t really find anything
> which jumps out at me and helps me get this information across simply, you
> know what they say, a picture tells a thousand words.
>
>
>
> Regards
>
> Paul
>
>
>
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