ADSL speeds.

**irneb** · 20-Feb-14, 11:08 AM

The difference between the tests on different days (if you didn't do them with various other downloads happening) would mean there's something else which is slowing the line down on that day. E.g. more people connected taday than yesterday means the main line shared between yourself and them is more congested. To use the water pipe analogy again: it would be as if your neighbour is filling his pool and you find that your shower head is now only dribbling.

Another thing that might be causing it is some restriction on the line, i.e. something went wrong somewhere. Again using the pipe - it's as if the pipe sprang a leak somewhere, or the plumbers are working on it and turned it off or rerouted your house (even temporarily) to use another pipe while they're doing something to the usual pipe.

**Marq** · 20-Feb-14, 02:21 PM

Understood - thanks for explaining it to me again, now I have it.

If I was getting 4bar of pressure at the front of the house, I was expecting the reading still to be 4bar at the front of the house, even if I had all the taps on, which it would be. This is not the same instrument.

Now looking at those tracert results - these numbers represent the pressure outside the house from the reservoir . Are they the same as the speedtest results?

**irneb** · 20-Feb-14, 02:48 PM

Originally Posted by Marq

Now looking at those tracert results - these numbers represent the pressure outside the house from the reservoir . Are they the same as the speedtest results?

Those are measuring the "ping time" or "time-to-live" (TTL), otherwise called latency. Any internet connection can be tested for 2 things: baud-rate and latency. The baud-rate is what's measured by the speed test. To explain the difference:

Think of an internet connection like a telephone call:

Latency is how long you wait after dialing before the other person picks up
Baud-rate is how many words you can speak per time interval other after the person answered, and how fast they can understand such.

Those latency tests show how many milliseconds it took for each link in your internet connection to the destination server took to "answer the call". I'm not sure exactly how tracert formats its results, why there are 3 columns showing ms times I'm not too sure, and it's also not clear if those figures are running totals or latency per hop (I think it's a running total though). It also shows where the main issues are. E.g. here's mine (local IP's and domains redacted for security purposes):

Code:

C:\Users\Irne>tracert www.bbc.com

Tracing route to www-bbc-com.bbc.net.uk [212.58.246.94]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  #######
  2    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  #######
  3     1 ms     1 ms     1 ms  #######
  4     3 ms     2 ms     3 ms  #######
  5     2 ms     2 ms     2 ms  #######
  6     2 ms     2 ms     2 ms  ix-0-3-0-0.tcore1.JSO-Johannesburg.as6453.net [2
16.6.55.37]
  7   177 ms   178 ms   177 ms  41.206.178.2
  8   138 ms   138 ms   138 ms  195.219.214.25
  9   179 ms   178 ms   178 ms  80.231.158.1
 10   176 ms     *      175 ms  if-1-3.tcore1.SV8-Highbridge.as6453.net [80.231.
158.30]
 11   173 ms   174 ms     *     80.231.138.22
 12   176 ms   176 ms   176 ms  if-2-2.tcore1.L78-London.as6453.net [80.231.131.
 13   174 ms   174 ms     *     80.231.130.86
 14   173 ms   173 ms   173 ms  80.231.154.17
 15   177 ms   177 ms   177 ms  80.231.153.66
 16   175 ms   175 ms   175 ms  ae-70-70.csw2.Paris1.Level3.net [4.69.168.126]
 17   176 ms   176 ms   176 ms  ae-71-71.ebr1.Paris1.Level3.net [4.69.161.81]
 18   173 ms   173 ms   173 ms  4.69.143.101
 19   173 ms   174 ms   173 ms  4.69.153.118
 20   173 ms   173 ms   173 ms  4.69.166.5
 21   175 ms   175 ms   175 ms  212.113.14.222
 22     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 23     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 24   174 ms   174 ms   174 ms  ae0.er01.cwwtf.bbc.co.uk [132.185.254.93]
 25   175 ms   175 ms   175 ms  132.185.255.165
 26   178 ms   177 ms   177 ms  bbc-vip015.cwwtf.bbc.co.uk [212.58.246.94]

Trace complete.

This is using my office connection through a NeoTel 50MB/s fibre optic connection. Notice the latency jumps up significantly for the first hop to an international server (the Highbridge server). And most of the delays and timeouts happens overseas.

In your case though it seems the link from your local exchange to the jhb server takes longer to answer than my entire list of servers combined, for one of the tests, the other seemed to work quite well (anything below 100ms [1/10 of a second] is considered reasonable to good). Though your only timeout happened somewhere in BBC's own servers.

**irneb** · 20-Feb-14, 03:02 PM

My baud-rate test though is a whole different matter. Local inside JHB:

Some other tests only show downloads of around 28MBits/s and uploads around 6MBits/s.

When running the test to a Cape Town server it fails on Latency. Seems there's a huge problem within SA.

And to an international connection:

**irneb** · 20-Feb-14, 03:09 PM

Originally Posted by Marq

If I was getting 4bar of pressure at the front of the house, I was expecting the reading still to be 4bar at the front of the house, even if I had all the taps on, which it would be. This is not the same instrument.

It is a similar instrument, because the speed test is as if you've placed the pressure gauge on one of the taps inside your house - not at the water meter at your gate.

**Dave A** · 20-Feb-14, 10:13 PM

Originally Posted by irneb

When running the test to a Cape Town server it fails on Latency. Seems there's a huge problem within SA.

Yep - and its name is Telkom

Marq - I'm actually stunned at your one set of results to the jhb.core server - I think the fastest I've ever got is around the 135 ms mark. Mostly it's closer to 185 ms.

Irneb - I'm seriously jealous.

**irneb** · 21-Feb-14, 07:41 AM

Originally Posted by Dave A

Irneb - I'm seriously jealous.

Not the price though ... it's around R30k/month for the uncapped version. I suppose that's mitigated since it's shared between 70 people. We only recently (2 months ago) upgraded as we had some serious issues with the Teklom 10MB/s line ... it seems all over JHB Telkom's ADSL is simply stupidly slow - I've previously had dial-up speeds in Sandton, now in Bryanston it's not any better. Even my Vodacom phone gets a minimum of 4MBits/sec (sometimes nearing 10Mb/s) while every single ADSL I have seen here never gets more than 1MB/s (no matter what the "rating" is supposed to be).

That seems to indicate that Telkom IS the culprit: whenever your ISP needs to link through some TelHell line your speed WILL drop! As another sample: Last week we issued our Revit model to a local Online Document Management site (located inside JHB) for the other consultants on the project to use. The model is 200MBytes in size - it took 15 seconds to upload (near LAN speeds). But using an overseas site took 20 minutes for the same model. Not sure if that tcore bridge is one of telkom's or even one of those others.

Strangely today it seems perfectly fine: Testing to Telkom's own SAIX server (in Randburg) gets near max speeds today (upload is seriously awesome - similar to a WiFi LAN):

Linking to Telkom's Durban site gives similar speeds (ping's a bit less though):

To CT also:

Even to a site in London seems to work decently (ping's a bit high to my liking though):

It must've been something which was hogging the system yesterday?

That said: I know my sister (in Dubai) and a friend in the US has even better speeds than this from their residences. For less than a telkom 4MB/s line rental. We're still being screwed silly in SA, poor speed priced at an arm and a leg (and the rest of your family's limbs).