ADSL Report #1: November 20th, 1997 ADSL Report #2: November 25th, 1997 ADSL Report #3: November 27th, 1997 ADSL Report #4: December 4th, 1997 ADSL Report #5: June 13th, 1998 ADSL Report #6: October 4th, 1998IMPORTANT NOTE: These ADSL reports are based on the now-discontinued Sympatico 2.2 Mbps ADSL service. As of 1999, Sympatico now offers a new 1 Mbps HSE service with its reduced speed and a reduced price, based on Nortel's splitterless DSL modems.
In simple terms, ADSL is a technology that can provide high speed Internet access at megabits per second over ordinary telephone lines! Back on November 12th, 1997, Sympatico Internet started advertising ADSL Internet access in Ottawa, in the newspaper and on the website at http://www.adsl.sympatico.ca/. Being a heavy Internet user myself, I promptly ordered ADSL the same morning it was first available. I noticed several posts in the local newsgroup ott.online regarding ADSL, and several people were interested in ADSL. There was even a debate going on about the merits of Wave Cable Internet versus ADSL. (Note: I do believe Cable Internet and ADSL are both viable technologies). Over the course of several days, I posted ADSL reports in the newsgroup for everyone to read. They are here for your reading pleasure. Please bear in mind that some parts of these reports may be outdated due to service changes, etc.
ADSL Report #1: November 20th, 1997
ADSL Report #2: November 25th, 1997
ADSL Report #3: November 27th, 1997
ADSL Report #4: December 4th, 1997
ADSL Report #5: June 13th, 1998
ADSL Report #6: October 4th, 1998
If you have any questions or curiousities about ADSL, feel free to email me at marky@ottawa.com [2003 Note: Discontinued email address]!
Hi,
I thought I would report on it as it might be of interest to you (because Sympatico is probably competition for your ISDN users and affects your plans to deploy ADSL). Being one of the first non-test-trial customers to sign up for ADSL, you might want me to report on my progress to get more background information about Bell Sympatico's offering. Let me know if you do not want me to continue sending you email updates.
It includes a "HIGH SPEED EDITION" specific manual, a CDROM, and an envelope containing all the stuff like my username, password, email address, DNS, gateway, IP address, news server, pop server. It includes Communicator 4.x on the CDROM and instructions on how to manually configure my computer for their ADSL modem.
I just discovered that the cancellation fee is $400 if I do not return my ADSL modem. That appears to imply Sympatico pays Westell around only $400.00 Canadian for their FlexCap2 RADSL modem. I find that's a rather cheap price for a 2.2 megabit/sec ADSL modem, if this is true. Their ADSL modem, I learned, is an automatically-rate-adaptive type that doesn't need telco fine-tuning like other ADSL modems. I wonder if smaller Ottawa ISPs can even get such cheap prices on ADSL modems.
I also hear there's a meeting for all ISP's to talk about the ADSL competition problem. If Bell and Sympatico is ordered to equalize rates everywhere, allowing smaller ISPs to compete economically with ADSL, maybe an alliance between all ISPs in Ottawa could purchase a large quantity of FlexCap2 ADSL modems to get such a cheap price for ADSL modems. (Other ISPs are saying they cost $1000 each, such as Cyberus will require users to buy the ADSL modem for $1000)
While I am getting ADSL, I support fair competition regarding ADSL and I'm watching things happen with interest. I would particularly like Bell to drop residental ISDN monthly charges to something like $25-$30 per month, and equalize ADSL rates so that other ISPs can compete more effectively. I might actually end up seeing Sympatico raise rates to over $100. That may put risk to my account, but as a consumer I want the best and fastest Internet now. I was waiting for Wave, but ADSL beat Wave to this area! I do see how ADSL/Wave can compete with ISDN however. As hypocritical as it may seem because one might argue I could protest by not signing up for ADSL, but it would be a futile protest I feel.
I thought I would let you all know. Will report more on my ADSL connection as more information becomes available! (My ADSL line gets installed on November 27th, I don't know of anyone who is a non-trial participant in Ottawa who's getting a line installed earlier than that!)
Thanks,
Mark Rejhon
http://www.marky.com/
| ADSL Report #2: November 25th, 1997 |
Hi,
Less than three days to my new ADSL line installation!
This is my second ADSL update to everyone curious about my ADSL experience. Many of Ottawa's heavy Internet users like me, are excited and counting the days till Bell comes to install their ADSL line. Many ISP's already know most (or even all) of the information enclosed within, but many end-users will find this interesting reading.
For those concerned about the ADSL pricing debacle, I hear there will be plenty of information about this in your coveted copy of the December issue of MONITOR magazine.
The Technospeak:
A caveat about ADSL modems: If you live more than a few kilometers from a phone switching center, your ADSL modem won't operate at 2.2 megabits per second. You might only get 640 kilobits per second! This is because like an ordinary modem, Sympatico ADSL uses Westell-brand "FlexCap2" RADSL modems that has the ability to automatically switch speeds between 640 kbps and 2.2 mbps as line conditions allow. You can find out more about these modems at http://www.westell.com/flexCap2.html but at the moment, you can't get the modem separately from your ADSL link - you have to rent it from Sympatico (included in the monthly charge).
The bargain ethernet card bundle: If you've looked closely at the Sympatico ADSL installation rates you notice that you can get an Ethernet card installed by Bell for only $25.00 extra, and that card is yours for keeps, not rental! (For monthly plans, $100 without ethernet card, $125 with ethernet card) These are genuine 3Com Etherlink III cards. Most ISP's reading this message already know about this, but some users may want to opt for this bargain even if they already have an Ethernet card installed. Older, inefficient (especially 8-bit) Ethernet cards can slow down your system and can't download data from the ADSL modem so it is a good idea to opt for one of these cards.
The speed of Internet: Many people have been curious about how fast Sympatico ADSL will be. People who already tried ADSL at one of the Bell PhoneCentre's such as the one at Rideau Centre, know how fast ADSL can be. Right now it's definitely as fast as a T1 link but the real question comes when many users are using ADSL simultaneously. I expect that the first time I use ADSL (since I am one of the users who signed up on the first day of ADSL availability) it will still be similiarly fast, but once many users get Sympatico ADSL, there could be some speed problems. Maybe the speed drop won't be too drastic and it will still even be faster than ISDN. I'll definitely report to you on how fast ADSL is the first time I use it, and keep updating after that to let you know how ADSL speed stand up to the increasing numbers of new users signing up for ADSL. For sure you should expect very drastic extremes of speeds, including 0.1 Kbytes/sec for super-slow sites (same speed as you get right now from slow sites) all the way up to ~100 to 250 Kbytes/sec for very large high-speed sites.
Connecting multiple computers to one Internet link: Things could get interesting for Sympatico ADSL customers who has a home LAN. I know a few Rogers Wave users who have installed WinGate (http://www.wingate.net/) to share one Internet connection among multiple computers for a home or family LAN! This works even if the Internet link has only one IP address, all computers can surf the Internet simultaneously. This should work with the ADSL link, although I have no idea if it's against Sympatico policy to do this but it's virtually undetectable because it still looks like all the traffic is still coming from one IP address. If users are enterprising enough to do this, they require two Ethernet cards on the system that's connected to the ADSL modem (one Ethernet card for the ADSL modem, another one for the LAN itself)
Servers: At the present moment, there seems to be no policy against running servers on your ADSL link. This means you could run a web server, ftp server, irc server, Quake server, etc, as long as it is only for personal purposes. You get a static IP address, and you could theoretically run your own nameserver, and sign up for your very own domain name on your very own home computer (if you are computer geek enough to do this). As of right now, there is currently NO gateway or proxy that prevents you from doing this on Sympatico. It will be interesting to see what Sympatico decides to do once some users start running "Warez" download sites on their accounts - a common problem at many Cable Internet providers, especially in the USA.
The Installation Process:
Availability: According to a couple of other people I talked to, it appears that Sympatico ADSL beat Rogers Wave to nearly the entire Vanier area! If you're a Vanier resident waiting for Rogers Wave for a long time, then you've got an alternative option already. Curiously, Sympatico ADSL still isn't available in some of the Kanata/Nepean "high tech" community, while it's already available in Vanier!
The ADSL phone jack: When the bell tech comes to your place, they need to install a splitter unit of sorts in your house, to separate the ADSL signal from the regular voice/fax/modem signal from the rest of your house. This means you will have to tell the bell tech where to install the special jack, and it is likely you will only be able to plug the ADSL modem into that particular jack. However, ADSL won't intefere with your phone line, because even while you are surfing the Internet, all your phones in your house are still active and will ring even while you're connected to the Internet. Why, you can even have two computers connected to the same phone line - one surfing the Internet over ADSL, one surfing the Net via regular modem! ISDN users rejoice: All calling features still work, and you can still use the phone during a blackout without the caveats associated with ISDN! (ISPs might mourn the loss of potentially many residential ISDN customers to ADSL, however)
The Multimedia Possibilities:
Newsgroups: I heard Sympatico has recently trimmed their newsservers, which has prompted several complaints from Sympatico users about missing newsgroups. Lots of dead newsgroups were removed, and regional newsgroups such as tor.* and uw.* were also removed. I suspect that a few good newsgroups got pulled along with the removal of newsgroups, but at least you won't see useless empty newsgroups like "alt.barny.die.die.die" on Sympatico anymore ;-) .... I just hope that Sympatico has kept major newsgroups running and their newsserver is fast. I'll be reporting on newsserver speed as soon as I get Sympatico ADSL.
High speed specific content: High-quality video clips and sounds are also available on Sympatico's High Speed homepage (viewable only by ADSL users I believe), I'll give you a review of this webpage once I get my ADSL!
Full screen video: With ADSL, you can get 100 kbps to 400 kbps (that's kilobits per second, not kiloBYTES per second, kids.) streaming video if you have RealPlayer version 5.0 available at www.real.com, the ADSL link should be able to easily play this type of video. While the video is nowhere near TV quality, I've taken a look and it looks an amazing 10-20 times clearer than current postage-size 28.8kbps RealVideo clips. According to my subjective observations of Internet speed (over other business high speed links I've tried elsewhere), today's Internet is only barely fast enough to support these RealVideo streams, as long as it's on a fast server and not too many people are using the same server at once. And there's not much full-screen RealVideo on the Internet yet. However, prospective ADSL users may want to give this new technology a try anyway!
CD-quality sound: Some people are already using software to play virtually CD-quality music directly over the Internet on high speed links. They should work fine over the Internet - the software (including "WinPlay" and "WinAmp") is downloadable from http://www.windows95.com/ ... I don't have these programs as I am hearing impaired myself.
Final Note:
If any of the information in this report is found to be incorrect, please let me know ASAP via marky@ottawa.com [2003 Note: Discontinued email address]
Thanks,
Mark Rejhon
http://www.marky.com/
| ADSL Report #3: November 27th, 1997 |
Hi all!
This is my ADSL report #3.
Yes, my ADSL line is up and running.
Yes, I'll tell you all about it ;-) starting with the bell tech.
Getting it all Running:
The Scheduling Hassle: I learned two days ago that two tech people would come to your place, if you also ordered an Ethernet card. One to install the Ethernet card, and one to install your ADSL line. So if you know how to install an Ethernet card, I suggest you get one and install it yourself to save yourself any headaches. Regardless of what you ordered for your ADSL Internet link, plan on taking a full day off your work on the day that the bell tech comes. This is because they seem to have a big schedule crunch right now. At least in the forseeable future, expect Sympatico to tell you a time estimate of "between 8am and 5pm" even ON THE DAY that the person is supposed to come! Some people will find this very majorly inconvenient, so I hope this is not a sign of things to come.
Network card configuration: I had all the settings needed on a piece of paper so I simply pre-configured my Ethernet card and TCP/IP network settings before the Bell techperson came. (All of you who ordered ADSL in the middle of November should have gotten something couriered to you by now, including a Sympatico CD-ROM and your very own fixed IP address ;-). Also, make sure you set "connect to the Internet by LAN" via the Internet preferences in Control Panel. Otherwise your Internet applications will still insist on dialing the Internet even if ADSL Internet is running on your system.
The Installation: The techperson came a little earlier than expected (before 11am) and took a look at my line. He took apart the phone jack and I told him that it was the only jack for that particular phone line. This was good news to him; this meant he didn't need to install any additional wiring. However, he told me he needed to look at all phone jacks in the entire house because my phone line used the same "wire bundle". Over the next 30 minutes, he did all kinds of things like adjust the wiring in them, and strengthen the connections between wires. He even chopped old twists and connectors (where two wires are connected together) and put what looked like industrial-strength metal crimps over them (He told me this was to improve signal strength for ADSL). After all this was done, the phone system in my house was basically the same as before and then he installed the ADSL line splitter right in my bedroom (instead of at the demarcation point). After it was all done, we had to wait 10 minutes for the bell central switching office to connect the ADSL equipment on their end. After a few minor network settings change on my system, my ADSL line started working immediately and Internet started like greased lightning.
The ADSL phone jack: It looks a lot like an ISDN phone jack. The ADSL line splitter box looks like an overgrown phone jack, it provides a regular phone jack (works all the time even during blackouts), and an ADSL modem jack that connects an ADSL modem to the line. All included in the installation cost, the Bell techperson will probably install this ADSL splitter at your computer's location, but I imagine it could be installed at the demarcation point if you have other phone jacks in the house for the same phone line, and wire an ADSL extension jack to your computer's location.
Using my phone: I was able to use my telephone just fine, at the same time as surfing over the Internet. I was even able to connect to BBS's and a shell account of another ISP on my old-fashioned X2 modem in another window, while I was surfing the Internet over ADSL. Some people will find this mighty convenient, especially in small one-line dwellings.
Availability: The Bell techperson told me that the reason why ADSL is available in Vanier instead of some parts of Kanata is because Vanier is closer to MAIN switching offices, while some of Kanata is served by REMOTE switching offices. Bell says that they will probably add ADSL capability to remote switching offices eventually, but right now ADSL-less Kanata residents will have to wait.
What you have been waiting for: PERFORMANCE!
First experience: I fired up Netscape, and it started downloading the homepage immediately without prompting me to dial the Internet.
Webpage speed: Two words - greased lightning. Many large websites like www.yahoo.com, www.news.com, www.windows95.com, www.microsoft.com, www.netscape.com, www.bell.ca, www.sympatico.ca, www.download.com, www.cnet.com, www.mci.com, are literally greased lightning now compared to modem speed. Granted, I ran into a few websites that were still SLOW (but still faster than X2 modem) so some people may want to temper their expectations first and be pleasantly surprised instead of dissapointed. Unfortunately websurfing is can be a hit-or-miss thing especially if you like to surf smaller sites that are connected behind slower Internet backbones.
Download speed: I downloaded Netscape 4.04 (15 megabytes) in a mere 4 minutes. Yes, I know Sympatico includes Netscape 4.04 but I wanted to do a download test ;-) Download speeds start out a little slow at first and rapidly accelerate to a speed between 100 to 200 kilobytes per second if you are downloading from the fastest download sites on the Internet. Downloads were fast from major download sites that aren't currently the victim of a popular download or few. BUT...People who like to download huge videogame demos immediately after they are released may be a little dissapointed because these are usually "crunch download times" choking a popular download site and you might get only 1-15 kilobytes per second instead of 50-150 kilobytes per second that you observe on some other big download sites. Computer-literate people will want to seek out large mirror FTP sites directly connected to MCI's backbone for the fastest download speeds.
Newserver: One word - WOW. I've never seen a newsserver this fast before. It's even complete to boot, contrary to rumors I heard. It's even faster than Rogers Wave's. I was very skeptical about Sympatico's newsserver because I heard disparaging things about it, including slowness and missing newsgroups. When I logged onto news1.on.sympatico.ca, I got all newsgroups including the illegal ones that I never read anyway. This is one UNCENSORED and FAST newsserver. News junkies should look no further than Sympatico ADSL. The entire newsgroup list downloaded in mere seconds and I subscribed to several. Your computer becomes the bottleneck when reading news on ADSL because there was a lot of hard disk access (newsgroup header cache being saved to disk). Articles appear in a fraction of a second even if they contains a picture. Articles within alt.binaries.* are completely downloaded and decoded by Communicator 4.04 before 500 milliseconds passed by since you clicked on the article. This means you can flip through articles in alt.binaries.* almost like a rolodex, without waiting for the images to download. While this newsserver is the fastest I've ever seen, this is only a PRELIMINARY observation. Problems may crop up later and I don't think they can guarantee this speed, and maybe the newsfeed may not turn out to be good, but I was IMPRESSED in these preliminary observations. If you want me to verify the existence of your favourite newsgroups, let me know, and I can do that for you. Hard-core tin users might want to give Netscape Communicator 4.04 a try, because Sympatico comes with absolutely NO shell account.
Accessing my other Internet account: I was able to telnet into my Magma Internet account and it almost felt like typing to a local console on a unix machine because of the low latency. However, there is a problem that cropped up between the "canet.ca" and "rns.net" backbones (hopefully resolved eventually) so telnet was fraught with random freezes while I typed on Magma's prompt. (This is not Magma's fault, by the way).
Keeping your old email address: Since I am keeping my Magma account, I have configured my email to download all my email from my "marky@magma.ca" address via POP even while I am connected to Sympatico, but I have to send my email via Sympatico's mailserver. People who has an existing Internet account will probably be able to set thier incoming POP mailserver to their old ISP's, while setting their outgoing SMTP server to Sympatico's. That way, you can keep your old email address. I'll be running this setup for now, until I forward all my Magma email to my Sympatico address, but I will be keeping my "marky@ottawa.com" [2003 Note: Discontinued email address] return email address (You can get free permanent @ottawa.com email addresses from www.ottawa.com in case you didn't know [2003 Note: This is no longer available]). However, if you get Sympatico ADSL, you should ask people to send large file attachements directly to your Sympatico's email address instead so that attachments download fast to your computer at speeds approaching nearly 200 Kilobytes per second.
The Optimistic in You: In an overly optimistic view (Some people say "I want to always get 40 Kbytes/sec all the time") you'll be very dissapointed. ADSL isn't the cure for slow Internet sites. Temper your expectations, ADSL isn't as fast as you think. It may not always be faster than Rogers Wave. Yes, it's faster than ISDN and X2 but it won't shoot data to your computer consistently fast. The Internet becomes the bottleneck, not your computer anymore. Many sites on the Internet are slow. Heavy-loaded download sites are still slow. Some international or overloaded sites still got only 500 BYTES per second on my ADSL line. Same speed as over your 28.8k link. The Internet is slower than your ADSL modem. Connections to a campus backbone shell account is still slow. Besides, when there's many people on ADSL, it'll be even slower because everyone is downloading at the same time. You might even be perfectly happy on a cheap "unlimited" Internet account, and save the money for a vacation with your "loved one" ;-) Forget about ADSL, you don't need it.
The Skeptic In You: In a skeptical view (Some skeptical readers told me "I'll never get over 7 Kbytes/sec" and "Internet wont go faster than 40 kilobits", etc). ADSL Internet will definitely exceed expectations. Actually, it will SURPRISE you. Sympatico's 155Mbps ATM backbone is 100 TIMES faster than a 1.5Mbps "T1" at many small Ottawa ISPs and university campuses! A download from some San Francisco sites like Netscape can surprise you with rapid-fire kilobytes of data. At over 100 full kilobytes per second, I download Netscape Communicator 4.04 at 15 megabytes downloaded in a mere 4 minutes. I even got a real download that went 180 kilobytes per second into my home. QuickTime movies often download faster than I can play them, so I can start playing them immediately like streaming media. Treat the Internet like a jukebox and play CD-quality stereo MP3 music files over the Internet in real time. And I think it'll still be reasonably fast because not everyone in Ottawa can afford to get on ADSL at once. By that distant future, the Internet backbone will be about 1000 times faster. And Bell and Sympatico is rich, they will upgrade their backbone when they feel the extra speed is necessary. Who cares about a few slow sites when there are other fast sites on the Internet? And Bell is connected to MCI which is the fastest backbone in the world. ADSL is the ULTIMATE link.
Poision candy: Someone mentioned that ADSL could be like poision candy because Sympatico may be planning to set a metered download limit on ADSL of 1 gigabyte (and charge for anything over 1 gigabyte). This is only RUMOR but Saskatchewan's Sypatico ADSL has ALREADY done this, and Rogers Wave is doing this too in their connection agreement, even though they're not yet actually paying attention to users downloading more than 1 gigabyte. This might be a scary thought for some people, but in my opinion it's very likely to happen eventually and probably will last until backbones get cheaper-per-kilobyte in the future. At least you can stay connected to the Internet for 24 hours a day even if you don't download much ;-)
Proxy: None. Nada. You get full unfettered access to the Internet - I didn't see any problems or limitations so far, but I will let you know if I do in the next ADSL newsletter #4.
The Sympatico Internet Backbone:
The Backbone: I heard from someone Sympatico recently upgraded their backbone before deploying ADSL but it's an OC3 155 Mbps at the absolute minimum. I wouldn't be surprised if they expand it to keep up with increasing numbers of ADSL users (Although today at *this* moment, less than 1 in 100 in Ottawa decided to get Cable Internet or Bell ADSL). Sympatico appears to be directly connected to the "canet.ca" backbone which I also heard has made major improvements recently. Bell Advanced communications runs the "canet.ca" backbone. I saw a backbone report where it used to be one of the worst backbones but is now in the top half best backbone providers in terms of bandwidth and latency nowadays. And Bell's "canet.ca" backbone is directly connected to MCI's MASSIVE OC12 backbone (Anybody who knows what I am talking about knows the implications of this - MCI has one of the fastest backbones on the Internet running at 622 Mbps and they are about to upgrade it to gigabit speeds). I think this is one of the reasons why big websites seem to break Internet speed barriers over an ADSL link. It clearly appears to be that Sympatico is definitely not an old fashioned "T1" or even "T3" service.
Quirky freezes: I noticed that web browser sometimes freezes for 2 or 3 seconds while trying to access a website, then the webpage starts to pour onto the display (in a fast but an unusually herky-jerky fashion) of my web browser. I did a traceroute to these sites, and found out there is currently a problem with lost packets between "canet.ca" and "rns.net" backbones. (This only affects a small number of websites by the way, such as www.yahoo.ca, www.rogers.com and www.magma.ca ... All other websites I mentioned above were super-fast). Still, even with these freezes webpages download was still faster than over an ordinary modem. However, these packet losses will have serious effects on streaming media such as RealVideo or internet gaming. I'll report more after a while in ADSL report #4.
Network Latency: Pings are very low, as low as 8-40 milliseconds to some of Bell's servers! I even get pretty good pings across to big servers such as www.netscape.com at the other side of the country, 80 milliseconds to San Francisco! (I've attached a traceroute at the bottom)
Network videogaming: If you're looking for the ultimate Quake network-videogaming link, I believe this is it. I haven't tried any network videogames like Quake yet, but I will report on my Quake videogaming experience in ADSL report #4. since I'm wondering if there'll be mysterious spikes in ping (I'm just wondering if there are going to be any mysterious spikes in ping (freezes in Quake) but I hope not! While I have not tried out a network videogame yet on this link, I fired up my old copy of Quake Spy v5.21 and set it to ping 20 servers simultaneously. Then I got these results out of 1,600 Quake servers that returned a ping reply. I did this at NOON on a WEEKDAY (November 27):
Lowest ping of 1600 servers 62ms
20th lowest of 1600 servers 89ms
100th lowest of 1600 servers 140ms
Pings and traceroutes for the geek in you:
D:\>hostname
cpu1080.adsl.bellglobal.com
D:\>ping www.bell.ca
Pinging www.bell.ca [198.235.69.82] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 198.235.69.82: bytes=32 time=16ms TTL=249
Reply from 198.235.69.82: bytes=32 time=18ms TTL=249
Reply from 198.235.69.82: bytes=32 time=17ms TTL=249
Reply from 198.235.69.82: bytes=32 time=17ms TTL=249
D:\DL>ping www.netscape.com
Pinging www24.netscape.com [207.200.73.73] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 207.200.73.73: bytes=32 time=75ms TTL=244
Reply from 207.200.73.73: bytes=32 time=76ms TTL=244
Reply from 207.200.73.73: bytes=32 time=78ms TTL=244
Reply from 207.200.73.73: bytes=32 time=78ms TTL=244
D:\DL>traceroute www.netscape.com
Tracing route to www24.netscape.com [207.200.73.73]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 8 ms 8 ms 8 ms 10.10.61.61
2 9 ms 8 ms 9 ms 206.47.228.209
3 15 ms 14 ms 15 ms 206.47.228.13
4 16 ms 16 ms 15 ms 206.47.228.145
5 237 ms 304 ms 87 ms core-fa5-1-0.ontario.canet.ca [206.108.96.33]
6 270 ms 43 ms 351 ms border1-fa5-0-0.ontario.canet.ca [205.207.238.209]
7 30 ms 29 ms 31 ms bordercore1-hssi0-0.WillowSprings.mci.net [166.48.21.249]
8 184 ms 287 ms 302 ms bordercore2.SanFrancisco.mci.net [166.48.14.1]
9 76 ms 85 ms 77 ms netscape.SanFrancisco.mci.net [166.48.15.254]
10 77 ms 77 ms 80 ms h-207-200-71-20.netscape.com [207.200.71.20]
11 78 ms 77 ms 79 ms www24.netscape.com [207.200.73.73]
Trace complete.
D:\>traceroute www.3drealms.com
Tracing route to 3drealms.com [207.115.208.1]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 8 ms 8 ms 8 ms 10.10.61.61
2 9 ms 8 ms 9 ms 206.47.228.209
3 15 ms 15 ms 15 ms 206.47.228.13
4 16 ms 15 ms 15 ms 206.47.228.145
5 18 ms 16 ms 17 ms core-fa5-1-0.ontario.canet.ca [206.108.96.33]
6 18 ms 18 ms 18 ms border1-fa5-0-0.ontario.canet.ca [205.207.238.209]
7 21 ms 17 ms 18 ms tis-ttt.Teleglobe.CA [207.45.208.229]
8 34 ms 33 ms 31 ms gin-nyy-bb1.Teleglobe.net [207.45.208.246]
9 42 ms 41 ms 34 ms 0.Hssi10-0-0.GW1.NYC2.ALTER.NET [157.130.4.165]
10 33 ms 38 ms 38 ms 143.ATM10-0-0.XR1.EWR1.ALTER.NET [146.188.177.50]
11 45 ms 46 ms 34 ms 100.ATM3-0-0.TR1.EWR1.ALTER.NET [146.188.176.70]
12 89 ms 83 ms 84 ms 105.ATM4-0-0.TR1.HOU4.ALTER.NET [146.188.137.42]
13 89 ms 88 ms 84 ms 100.ATM4-0-0.XR1.HOU4.ALTER.NET [146.188.240.161]
14 80 ms 72 ms 83 ms 193.ATM4-0-0.CR1.HOU1.ALTER.NET [146.188.240.121]
15 130 ms 135 ms 135 ms 159.Hssi5-0.CR1.HOU1.Alter.Net [137.39.75.198]
16 118 ms 113 ms 133 ms dfw1-cr6-fddi0-0.gte.net [207.175.100.228]
17 133 ms 136 ms 138 ms dfw1-cr5-fddi8-0.gte.net [207.175.100.237]
18 128 ms 135 ms 145 ms 3drealms.com [207.115.208.1]
Trace complete.
D:\>traceroute www.yahoo.ca
Tracing route to y3.yahoo.ca [206.222.66.43]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 8 ms 8 ms 8 ms 10.10.61.61
2 9 ms 9 ms 10 ms 206.47.228.209
3 15 ms 15 ms 15 ms 206.47.228.13
4 216 ms 24 ms 352 ms 206.47.228.145
5 16 ms 17 ms 17 ms core-fa5-1-0.ontario.canet.ca [206.108.96.33]
6 19 ms 17 ms 17 ms psp.on.canet.ca [205.207.238.182]
7 84 ms 87 ms * RNS-border1.on.canet.ca [206.108.106.34]
8 97 ms * * hcap1-tor.tor.rns.net [206.222.64.1]
9 72 ms 84 ms 101 ms rogersmm.tor.rns.net [206.222.66.26]
10 114 ms 120 ms 103 ms y3.yahoo.ca [206.222.66.43]
Trace complete.
D:\>traceroute www.yahoo.ca
Tracing route to y3.yahoo.ca [206.222.66.43]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 8 ms 8 ms 8 ms 10.10.61.61
2 9 ms 9 ms 10 ms 206.47.228.209
3 15 ms 15 ms 15 ms 206.47.228.13
4 216 ms 24 ms 352 ms 206.47.228.145
5 16 ms 17 ms 17 ms core-fa5-1-0.ontario.canet.ca [206.108.96.33]
6 19 ms 17 ms 17 ms psp.on.canet.ca [205.207.238.182]
7 84 ms 87 ms * RNS-border1.on.canet.ca [206.108.106.34]
8 97 ms * * hcap1-tor.tor.rns.net [206.222.64.1]
9 72 ms 84 ms 101 ms rogersmm.tor.rns.net [206.222.66.26]
10 114 ms 120 ms 103 ms y3.yahoo.ca [206.222.66.43]
Trace complete.
D:\>traceroute www.mci.com
Tracing route to www.mci.com [199.249.18.22]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 9 ms 8 ms 8 ms 10.10.61.61
2 9 ms 9 ms 9 ms 206.47.228.209
3 15 ms 15 ms 15 ms 206.47.228.13
4 15 ms 16 ms 15 ms 206.47.228.145
5 16 ms 16 ms 17 ms core-fa5-1-0.ontario.canet.ca [206.108.96.33]
6 283 ms 354 ms 48 ms border1-fa5-0-0.ontario.canet.ca [205.207.238.209]
7 31 ms 30 ms 31 ms bordercore4-hssi1-0.WillowSprings.mci.net [166.48.35.253]
8 38 ms 37 ms 37 ms core2.NorthRoyalton.mci.net [204.70.4.45]
9 125 ms 211 ms 55 ms border8-fddi-0.NorthRoyalton.mci.net [204.70.98.67]
10 36 ms 35 ms 38 ms inp-mci.NorthRoyalton.mci.net [204.70.212.6]
11 37 ms 37 ms 35 ms ndcir2-fddi0-0.mcit.com [199.249.18.254]
12 38 ms 36 ms 37 ms www.mci.com [199.249.18.22]
Trace complete.
Thanks,
Mark Rejhon
http://www.marky.com/
| ADSL Report #4: December 4th, 1997 |
Hi again!
This is my long-awaited ADSL Report #4.
This is the end of Week One of my ADSL experience.
This is probably my last ADSL report in a while.
My one-week impression summary: Since November 27th, when I got my ADSL link, it has remained consistently fast even during midday. High Speed Net access make you start to really visit graphically-rich websites a lot more. ADSL appears to unleash Internet speed that you didn't know even existed during peak periods. It's funny when you begin to call 10-20 kilobytes per second a "slow" download speed when you get used to ADSL. After the novelty wears off, you begin to stop paying close attention to download speeds but do things you normally don't do over a modem link. (See "12 Things You Know Your Internet Is Too Fast When:" section at the bottom :)
First, The Caveats
The Quadruple B: Big Bad Bell Backlog: Did you order a new phone line recently? This also applies to ADSL or ISDN line installations. They'll give you a time estimate of between 8am and 5pm right up to when the technician comes. Sometimes they don't even show up on the day (Nicholas got his ADSL line installed one day late). My suggestion is to give them your pager/cell/work phone number and ask them to beep you 15 minutes before they arrive. Make sure you bring a car to work however (even if you have to borrow it from a friend) so that you can leave work on the snap. Make sure you explain to your boss you are on call for one day because of the Big Bad Bell Backlog and you are doing your job a favour by not taking a day off instead.
Slow websites: It's definitely not a cure for slow overseas websites, but apparently it sometimes helps for some of them. Most slow websites appear at least a little bit faster over ADSL. For some of these sites, they've definitely sped up quite a bit in percentage terms (5 Kbytes/sec instead of 1 Kbytes/sec). As in a previous ADSL report, I mentioned that a slow australian site had improved download speeds over ADSL. This might be because of Sympatico's backbone and/or ADSL's extremly low latencies (which affects the famed "ADSL Internet Speed Limit", explained below)
Network Problems: There were some network problems on Tuesday December 2nd that severely slowed down my ADSL link. The intereseting thing is that my Magma account also seemed slower than usual too (any other Magma users want to confirm this) and the Internet access at my work was extremely unreliable. Therefore this network problem wasn't limited to Sympatico so I heartily forgive them for this one (in exchange for the excellent speed I've been getting so far!)
Bandwidth Cap Rumors: Sympatico will tell you there are NO bandwidth caps if you ask them...BUT...if you ask them if it will happen in the FUTURE, then you will get a different answer or at least vague hints. I suspect Sympatico is going to do something similiar to what SaskTel's Sympatico already has done. If you go to to http://www.sasktel.com/sympaticohs_faq.html you discover there is a 1 GIGABYTE CAP for ADSL in Saskatchewan! I already knew of this when I got my Sympatico ADSL link, but people who are planning to run websites on their ADSL system should take caution. Wave already has a 1 gigabyte cap, so it really doesn't matter.
Netscape 4.04 cache cleanup problems: Over my ADSL link, I started to notice that sometimes my web browser would suddenly slow down mysteriously while downloading websites, and I would see "Cache cleanup...104 files" seem to be stuck in Netscape's status line for several seconds while websites were being downloaded. This persisted for 5 minutes while I was surfing the web, so I began to suspect it was Netscape's fault. Quitting and restarting Netscape solved this problem. Clearing the cache also solved this problem too. Hopefully Netscape fixes this problem for Version 4.05 though!
For Bandwidth Fanatics
Advisory Alert from the Bogus Internet Ratings Committee (B.I.R.C.): This section is B-rated. Lynx-users and the weak of heart and bandwidth-phobics should skip this section. Don't read this section if you hate bandwidth ;-)
The fastest TUCOWS download mirror: Internet applications will want to bookmark http://idirect.tucows.com/ because you can consistently get between 100 to 200 kilobytes per second download speed from this TUCOWS mirror. I downloaded an 8 megabyte file in 41 seconds for an average speed of 195 kilobytes per second. It seems to stay above 100 kilobytes per second even during peak.
Peer-to-peer speed: If you have any friends who are also getting ADSL, you can expect consistent peer-to-peer transfer speeds of 120 kilobytes per second. This is limited by the 1.1 megabit per second backchannel speed of the current ADSL modems.
Saturation point of ADSL link: The absolute maximum speed over ADSL link is about 240 kilobytes per second. While most sites can't send you data at that speed, I noticed that this is still easy to achieve if you start multiple downloads from different sites simultaneously, for an aggregate download speed of over 200 kilobytes per second even during peak. (This is only useful for heavy downloaders of huge files though, most people don't do concurrent downloads)
Multiple downloads from same site: Several other people using ADSL told me that when they start one download from the same site at 70 kilobytes per second, starting a second or third simultaneous download doesn't even slow down the first download! (As long as you have spare bandwidth up to 235 kilobytes per second, of course). I figured out why this happens; details are explained in "The ADSL Internet Speed Limit" below.
Internet Quake games: I had the opportunity to try a few of these games. Regular Quake is now almost like playing over LAN with the best Quake servers in GameSpy 3D (Available at http://www.gamespy.com/, it is the sequel to Quake Spy). I have played Quake over an ISDN before, and I can say ADSL is definitely much better than ISDN. With the bandwidth available, you can easily host a fast 32-player QuakeWorld server on your system too. (But I'm not gonna do that ;-)
Netscape 3.x versus 4.x: Over an ADSL link, Netscape 4.x supports HTTP/1.1 which benefits website speed. When it comes to a faster link, Netscape 4.x seems to be faster than IE 4.x but you may want to try both and see which you prefer. However, if you stick to older browsers such as Netscape 3.x, you should go into your Network Preferences, and set it to download 10 images simultaneously instead of the default 4. This will potentially double your surfing speed of fast websites, because of "The ADSL Internet Speed Limit" explained below.
The ADSL Internet Speed Limit
Simultaneous downloads faster than one: Wondering why one download from a site goes only 60 Kbytes/sec, but if you try three simultaneous downloads from the SAME SITE, each download goes 60 Kbytes/sec _EACH_ (total 180 Kbytes/sec aggregate)? You're probably wondering why a single download doesn't go 180 Kbytes/sec in the first place if the site is fast enough.
I figured out why: It boils down to latency. With current TCP protocols like HTTP and FTP, latency induces a speed limit. Even if there was UNLIMITED bandwidth between you and a site, if the site is taking 100 milliseconds longer to transmit data back to you, your downloads will be slower than before. Imagine placing an overseas phone call, sometimes you will notice a delay in conversations caused by the speed of light. Exactly the same thing is happening with the Internet (as well as delays caused by routers, etc). The higher the latency, the slower the download, even if there is unlimited bandwidth.
Technical Notes about Internet Speed Limit over Sympatico ADSL
Warning: This section is filled with technicial information.
The math equation determining the speed limit: It took me only a few minutes to confirm an approximate mathematical equation I had been guessing. If you know how to use the "ping" command to determine the latency of a site in milliseconds, you can calculate the approximate maximum download speed for a fast site using this approximate equation (assuming current default Windows 95 settings):
Max Kbytes/sec = 3500 / (average ping in milliseconds)
My experience seems to show that the above equation is reasonably accurate at predicting approximate download speeds from the fastest sites on the Net.
The cure would require the use of a larger "packet" size. Packets are blocks of data transmitted over the Internet. For those of you who don't know, the default packet size is around 1500 bytes. Over ADSL, you're transmitting well over a hundred packets per second! Unfortunately I was unable to transmit a data packet size larger than an MTU of 1500 bytes without causing the packet to be devided up. I want to set it to 8000 bytes because the big backbones can handle such large packet sizes. This may be a limitation caused by Sympatico or the brand of Ethernet card that I am using. I do plan on doing more research on this because the solution would potentially triple my typical download speed from many sites to 200 kilobytes per second. Unfortunately, there may be no other solution to this.
Pingtimes to Sympatico servers: Apparently, Sympatico seems to be using filters to prevent abuse of Sympatico servers so you can't measure ping times of them using regular ping. However, you can use TCP/UDP tests, and most Sympatico's servers have latencies of less than 20 milliseconds, which also helps to explain the fast newsserver response.
Your Own Domain Name:
Warning: This section is filled with technicial information.
Domain names: You could even assign your personal computer a domain name! I have assigned my computer a few domain names. "adsl.marky.com", "ftp.marky.com", "marky.com" and "cpu1080.adsl.bellglobal.com" all point to the same IP address now. You can even access my own computer at "http://adsl.marky.com/" (running Personal Web Server for Windows 95). Note that I have "www.marky.com" at a separate virtual hosting service, I just gave "www.marky.com" the IP address pointing to my virtual website. In order to do this easily, you need something called a "Nameserver hosting service".
Nameserver Hosting Service: Most people find it too difficult to run a nameserver on their own machine, and some ISP's will provide you nameserver hosting for relatively cheap. If you have a Magma account, Magma charges a one-time $65.00 fee to host your domain name on their nameserver. Simply put, you can register "mydomain.com". Then tell Magma to give "www.mydomain.com" any legitmate IP address. It can be any IP address, even outside Magma! Sympatico doesn't even know that my computer has a domain name because no work is needed on Sympatico's part. You can make up funny names like "hitme.mydomain.com" and "whoopee.mydomain.com" too. These are the step by step instructions needed:
1. Email or call up an ISP and ask them if they have "nameserver hosting service". If they give you a blank look, they probably don't do such tasks (Magma knows though). You could try explaining to them that you want to host your domain name on their nameserver, and point the domain name to an external IP address. Be very specific that you don't want a virtual webserver, you just want them to host ONLY your domain name without the webserver. Ask how much it costs. Magma charged me a $65.00 one-time fee for setting up my domain name on their nameserver, instead of monthly charges, because I already had an account with Magma.
2. Register the domain name at that ISP (You will get an Internic charge of $100 for 2 years) or get it transferred it to that ISP (Because I already registered marky.com a year ago)
3. Ask the ISP where you can email the domain name information to them, and then email them a list of domain names and IP addresses you want set:
yourdomain.com
12.34.56.78
www.yourdomain.com 12.34.56.78
ftp.yourdomain.com 12.34.56.78
irc.yourdomain.com 12.34.56.78
quake.yourdomain.com 12.34.56.78
homesystem.yourdomain.com 12.34.56.78
anyname.yourdomain.com 12.34.56.78
Where IP address 12.34.56.78 is your computer's static IP address, so that you can give yourself several domain names. (Sympatico should have given you the static IP address information when you signed up)
4. After about one week, the entire Internet can access your personal computer directly directly via your domain name! ;-) However, I think Sympatico policy says that you can only do stuff for your own personal use, like run your own homepage and run a private chat server for your friends, etc. (There's an ircd for Windows 95 available at www.windows95.com so you can be your own IRC server too. Heavy Linux Internet users will find heaven, however ;-)
12 Things You Know Your Internet Is Too Fast When:
1. You listen to Internet radio in the background while you surf and download files at the same time, and there's no audio breaks. (NOTE: Someone actually told me this)
2. You leave high-quality Internet Radio playing all day from your computer, even when you're doing household chores. (NOTE: Some people like to do this)
3. When typing /LIST on an IRC server displays in only 5 seconds. (NOTE: This actually happened to me on irc.istar.ca)
4. Treat a fast website rapidly like you would a Windows Help File because the next page loads almost instantly. (NOTE: This happens if you have a fast computer surfing the fastest few of the fast websites)
5. You start to become actually interested in VRML since you can see all the graphics in less than a minute.
6. When your AVI/MOV/MPG video clips take less time to download than to play. (NOTE: This actually is happening to me if the website is fast)
7. You start playing your QuickTime video clips while they're being downloaded.
8. You hear great CD music playing in the other room but find out that it's your roommate playing a .MP3 sound file directly over the Internet.
9. Playing Internet Quake feels more like you're playing over LAN instead of Internet. (NOTE: I can attest to this)
10. You start to actually like ActiveWorlds from http://www.activeworlds.com/ (NOTE: ActiveWorlds is a 3D chat environment that takes forever to download real-time 3D graphics over a modem link)
11. You actually try out a video game directly off your remote friend's hard disk via Windows 95 networking. (NOTE: You can actually map hard drive letters of your friend's computer, if you two configure Windows to do that)
12. Videoconferencing with another ADSL user becomes a lot like the stuff you see in movies or TV commercials instead of postage-stamp-size slideshows (NOTE: You do need correct software and hardware (which may include a powerful compressor card) in order to deliver this high quality full-screen smooth-motion video.)
Correction
Someone pointed out that the link between Sympatico's BGS backbone (155Mbps ATM) and MCI's backbone (622Mbps ATM) is only a T3. Nontheless, this actually isn't too bad and still seems quite fast. I was also told that the BGS backbone also peers with UU*Net as well as several other backbones.
Thanks,
Mark Rejhon
http://www.marky.com/
| ADSL Report #5: June 13th, 1998 |
Revised July 1st, 1998 to include minor additions mainly related to the fact that I have now moved to a new location and have my ADSL connection reinstalled.
ADSL Review By a British Columbia ADSL User
There is an excellent review by Rob and Jon in British Columbia about their ADSL connection, and many interesting tidbits of information. It is located on their own website at this address:
http://a1a87214.sympatico.bconnected.net/adsl/adsl1.htm
Quality Of Service And Bandwidth
Remarkably, service quality has been excellent generally. I expected much worse from Bell and Sympatico, but they have done an excellent job maintaining the quality of the bandwidth on the Internet connection.
While not perfect, the reliability is great. I have seen very occasional spurious slowdowns that lasts for a few hours at a time, about once a month. For example, sites that is supposed to go 150+ kilobytes per second almost all the time during evenings, goes only 15 kilobytes per second and consistently all over the Internet. I'm talking about drastic and very general slowdowns; usually I only see normal gradual slowdowns caused by peak periods throughout the day and week which are normal.
There was also one ADSL blackout that I noticed that lasted a short period, but the service returned not too long after. During the ice storm, I observed an ADSL blackout lasting approximately 4 hours, but that was acceptable, given the circumstances.
Fortunately, such slowdowns are not frequent. I have been seeing much more complaints by Rogers Wave customers than ADSL customers about poor quality of service in certain parts of Ottawa. Problems include DNS blackouts, and censorship occuring on new @Home newsgroup servers, and frequent slowdowns to the teens or less (5-15 K/sec instead of normal 30-35 K/sec)
Another time, I bumped the ADSL modem accidentally off the top of my computer, and it lost sync. It took 20 seconds before it resynchronized (blinking green light) and my Internet connection was back.
Also, I noticed that at least one person said signal strength from the phone jack on the ADSL splitter box, is somewhat weakened. It might be best to place normal modem and phone calls from another phone jack elsewhere in the house.
There were some periods of a slowed-down email server that couldn't transmit file attachments at full blast (ie nowhere close to 150+ kilobytes per second) some time ago, as well. I haven't visited Sympatico's newsgroup server often enough to gauge its recent performance, but when I did, I observed excellent speed.
If you see very few people complaining about ADSL, it is because there's been almost nothing to really complain about Sympatico's High Speed Edition lately.
How To Tweak ADSL To Get 50% More Speed!
Gasp. Unbelievable? Nope!
Some ADSL users in Ottawa, including me, are now getting well over 200 kilobytes per second typically from major sites that has massive bandwidth connections like ftp://ftp.microsoft.com , ftp://ftp20.netscape.com , ftp://sunsite.unc.edu and many other sites hosted by at least a T3. Yes, I am talking about bytes, and I know that one byte is eight bits ;-)
It comes down to optimizing a fundamental inefficiency of a high speed Windows 95/98 Internet connection. You can speed up your ADSL connection using an excellent tweak that Rob told me about. Even if your ADSL connection is not adapted to the full 2.2 Mbps, you can still benefit from an improvement in throughput from distant sites.
If you have heard of a program called "MTUspeed"
and "TweakDUN", you know that those types of optimizations can speed up an
ordinary modem link. Now, ADSL connections can benefit from such programs but require
vastly different settings or there will be performance problems. You can also do a manual
registry edit to get the same effect, to coax out more speed
from an already blazing ADSL connection!
This tweak will mainly benefit Windows 95/98 and is illustrated at:
http://a1a87214.sympatico.bconnected.net/adsl/review/tweak.htm
If you prefer to do it via a manual registry edit instead, you can do this on Windows 95 and recent Windows 98 systems:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\VxD\MSTCP]
"DefaultRcvWindow"="32120"
Most Windows systems have a default MTU of 1500, and MSS of 1460, which are what are recommended for ADSL. Don't forget to restart Windows after doing the tweak. There is a tweak for NT but you will have to search elsewhere on the Net for it, since I'm using Linux and Windows 95 OSR2 ;-). I am not sure about Windows 98 defaults though, so results on Windows 98 systems may vary from Windows 95 systems.
How does it work? Think about this. Most Windows 95 and 98 have this key missing, which means a default value of 8192 bytes is being used. The receive window is the maximum amount of data in bytes, that can be downloaded at a time before the data has to be acknowledged to the remote.
Let's illustrate an example. If a high speed distant site
such as ftp://ftp.microsoft.com is not
overloaded but has a ping latency of 100 milliseconds (1/10th of a second), that
means only 81,920 bytes per second can be transmitted to you even if
the bandwidth was infinite all the way, on both ends!! This is because only 8,192 bytes
can be acknowledged every 1/10th of a second.
By increasing this value to around 32 kilobytes, you greatly reduce this bottleneck. Presto, you can now download at 200 kilobytes per second from most T3 download sites that are not overloaded, and whenever the backbones can support your bandwidth.
There is a similiar tweak for Windows NT systems, but it covers a different key, and I am not using Windows NT, so I am not familiar with how to tweak Windows NT systems for this speedup. Linux systems are already optimized from the onset, so the tweak basically speeds up 95/98 systems to the same downloading speed as unix systems.
My Experience With The ADSL Speedup Tweak Above
I have done the tweak about 3 months ago, and have been extremely happy since then.
You won't always get over 200 kilobytes per second, but those speeds start to become much more common. I'm getting these speeds to Windows 95 systems even behind my Linux gateway system. If you are using a Linux gateway system, Linux will not benefit, but you can still apply the tweak to the other networked Windows 95/98 systems to gain the benefit.
Personally, I have a new speed record of 258 kilobytes per second, that occured from my favourite video game download site, ftp://ftp.op3dfx.com ... I have achieved approximately 240 kilobytes per second from Microsoft and Netscape. During midday, the speeds are lower. For a video game download site such as ftp://ftp.op3dfx.com I got only 30 kilobytes per second during midday, but was still able to get 160 kilobytes per second from Netscape! This was a test that was done a few weeks ago at 1:00pm via remotely logging onto my home Linux system.
At a blazing 250 kilobytes per second, you can download 120 megabytes of data in a mere 10 minutes! After this speedup tweak, ADSL claims a very _clear_ superiority to the competing local Wave Cable Internet offering at the moment, which presently is capped at only 500 kilobits per second. Cable Internet may be faster in some other cities, but it certainly isn't the case in the city of Ottawa.
After the tweak, some Wave systems also speed up a little bit, but the speed improvements are much larger for ADSL connections than for Wave connections.
It will be interesting to compare both Cable and ADSL again, after the speedup tweak has been done, and when the Cable Internet has raised their bandwidth cap per user to at least 2.0 megabits per second.
ADSL versus T1
On my new work, I had the opportunity to play around a bit with a T1 connection.
I can say that ADSL truly beats a T1 connection, even during midday. Skeptics who say that ADSL will be bogged down by thousands of users and deliver extremely poor quality, will be dissapointed to hear, that I have been unable to reveal evidence to the contrary.
I had the opportunity to remotely log onto my home system from work (telnet to my home system running Linux) and do some download tests from my home end, as well as doing download tests from this end as well.
I have been unable to push this connection to download a file faster than 150 kilobytes per second midday via the corporate T1, while I was frequently able to find several FTP and HTTP download sites that downloaded in excess of 200 kilobytes per second during peak via my ADSL connection! The site ftp://sunsite.unc.edu is an example. For sites like Microsoft and Netscape that frequently get more overloaded during midday, I was still able to exceed 150 kilobytes per second, while the T1 logged less than 100 kilobytes per second.
Right now, my present work is running a UU*Net T1 connection. While I am sure that this connection is being shared by a few other employees, there's only about 25 employees at this location and most were not doing downloads. There are certainly occasions where the T1 was faster to certain sites than the ADSL connection, but that could be more related to network topology more than else.
It does provide a context that surfing at home on an ADSL connection all to yourself, actually yields noticeably faster results!
I think Bell is doing an excellent job sustaining bandwidth during midday, despite the number of ADSL users that are now already surfing the Net. I just hope that the Internet continues to scale smoothly with the increasing numbers of high speed users in the future, to maintain available bandwidth on demand, per high speed user.
The Nightmare Of Supporting ADSL On Backbone
People say that a T3 is barely enough to support just 20 ADSL users. This is completely incorrect, because it is based on the assumption that everybody would be downloading at 2.2 megabits per second 24 hours a day. The real life fact, is that ADSL downloads occurs in big, explosive, sporadic bursts.
One reason is that not all ADSL users are always downloading for hours, because the duration of each download are not very long. The average user, who might be a busy computer consultant like me, may often download 100 megabytes per day on average in the limited time provided. Mom-and-pop type users will frequently download less, while those addicted to downloading commercial software (aka "warez") will download immensely more, some of them over 1 gigabyte per day!!
The fact, is that all my friends don't often download 100 megabytes per day on ADSL. But I heard that a number of local "warez" users love ADSL, so that majorly skews the bandwidth average. Fortunately, the numbers are not too massive, and I have heard Sympatico routinely warn these people about account deactivation due to activity such as hosting their own FTP sites for commercial software. According to ping tests on the cpu*.adsl.bellglobal.com addresses, it appears many people actually turn off their computers after they are done with ADSL, since I see some addresses returning pings at some times, and not at other times.
For the purpose of average, let's say that the average is 100 megabytes per user per peak period. Most ADSL usres have day jobs, so let's say that the peak period for ADSL users is from 7pm to midnight. That's an average of 20 megabytes per hour. (Let's ignore all downloads made outside 7pm to midnight, for sake of simplicity)
It's all sporadic bursts. Obviously, some users will download 100 megabytes in less than one hour, while others will download that 100 megabytes at another hour, etc. For sake of simplicity, let's assume it all averages out to 20 megabytes per hour. It goes without saying that ADSL users are much heavier downloaders than the modem downloader.
Let's assume that all the CO switches are presently connected via T3's (They are all upgradeable to beyond T3's for your information). A T3 is 45 megabits per second, which is 5.625 megaBYTES per second at 8 bits per byte. That translates to 20,250 megaBYTES per hour, at 60 minutes per hour, times 60 seconds per minute, times 5.625 megabytes per second.
ADSL user average: 20 megaBYTES per hour (during peak).
T3 connection: 20,250 megaBYTES per hour.
That looks like a single T3 will be able to support a whopping 1,000 ADSL users each! Let's set some aside for inefficiencies of utilizing T3 bandwidth and say that 75% is a reasonable maximum. Therefore, 750 users of ADSL can be supported per T3 without too much noticeable slowdown per user, given the proper networking equipment!
There are several CO's in Ottawa, and each has their own T3. According to traceroutes, I suspect that these T3's are connected directly to the 155 Mbps OC3 backbone of Ca*Net. The T3's could theoretically be upgraded to 155 Mbps, and the Ca*Net is already planned to be upgraded to something beyond, probably 622 Mbps.
Based on ping tests, there are now over 2,000 reserved static IP addresses for ADSL users (cpu1000.adsl.bellglobal.com all the way up to slightly above cpu3000.adsl.bellglobal.com). This is a good way to gauge the Ottawa-based ADSL growth rate, because these are all static IP addresses, and with a simple script, we can determine the highest hostname that exists, and the highest hostname that returns a ping.
I can be incorrect in my projections. Perhaps the average bandwidth used per ADSL user is even less, or even more. I think that a T3 can support more than 750 ADSL users with a slight slowdown for each, and because of the fact that I only focussed on a 5-hour peak window, which may be unrealistic because some ADSL users download during the day or during the wee hours.
Also, it seems that about 50% of ADSL users turn off their computer after they are finished, which indicates 50% of ADSL users are a less hard-core type of person and/or not interested in running servers or leaving their computer on all the time. (This is roughly based on ping tests on a small sample within cpu*.adsl.bellglobal.com hosts which I found appear to vary whether or not they return their pings.)
Also, at only 750 ADSL users, the cost of a T3 is not covered at $65-70 per user. (Or am I wrong? Anybody from the ISP industry can comment on this?). Therefore I think I am conservative in my estimate about the 750 ADSL users value. The point is, that Bell/Symaptico seems to have made the right decision to initially start with a T3 to each CO in Ottawa. It is plenty enough initially to support ADSL users.
It looks like that on the basis of these calculations, that high speed connections are sustainable, and that there is no big concern for a major bandwidth slowdown, since the ADSL growth rate is steady and not too explosive (because ADSL is more expensive, the long wait, skepticism, existing Wave users not switching, and the current lack of advertising about the service).
I did hear, however, that Bell's Ca*Net backbone seems to be undergoing routing changes, especially how it interchanges with RNS traffic. That might explain some users observations of slower download speeds to certain sites. Myself, I haven't noticed these slowdowns, though.
Television Quality Video Over ADSL
This is not your everyday 200 kilobit per second RealVideo. You can get nearly television quality video on demand at this website:
http://www.nmis.org/NewsInteractive/CNN/Newsroom/contents.html
There are mammoth 1200 kilobit per second MPEG videos (150 kilobytes per second at 8 bits per byte) on that webpage, from CNN! After the speedup tweak, I have been able to get 180 kilobytes per second, which means I have enough bandwidth to play these videos real time!
While I've been a Netscape person, and have Internet Explorer installed, you should use Internet Explorer on this web page because Internet Explorer has the ability to play MPEG videos real time. You also need to have at least Microsoft's ActiveMovie player installed, but that is included with most IE3 and IE4 packages so it may already be installed. Try it!
Open the webpage in IE3 or IE4, click on one of the MPEG videos, wait for it to download about 3-5% of the video, then press play. It'll play all the way to end, if you've got enough bandwidth to download the shebang faster than you can play it. Maximize the video window for the full effect of the experience. ;-)
You need a fast system, good video card, good Ethernet card, being close enough to the CO switch, and the Windows 95/98 speedup tweak, if you hope to be able to watch this near television quality video in real time. You also probably have to be close to its backbone, so if you are from outside Ottawa, you might get the same performance.
I now use this to "wow" my friends, when they are over and is curious about my ADSL connection. They almost always go "wow" over television over Internet.
This is not crummy RealVideo or NetShow. This is real, breathing, near television quality video at 30 frames per second, playing at a whopping 150 kilobytes per second with very good audio quality. It shows a lot of promise for the future of Internet bandwidth and the possibilities!
Be warned, not everyone is able to get enough bandwidth and even so, it will vary from time to time, but I can say that I have been frequently able to get real time near TV quality already. ;-)
Linux IP Masquerading and NAT
This is one way of transparently sharing your ADSL connection between multiple computers. It allows you to run a virtual sub-network of simulated IP addresses, through any kind of Internet connection (even an ordinary 33.6k ISP account) that contains only one IP address.
Don't know what Linux is? You can skip this section if you have no interest in this UNIX-like operating system. Some users of ADSL are using WinGate at http://www.wingate.net to share ADSL service between more than one computer. However, there is a superior solution. It's called Linux ipmasq (or "IP Masquerading").
The benefit is that you can run almost anything on any machine behind the Linux ipmasq gateway. You can have virtually any TCP/IP compilant systems (including Macs, Windows, and Unix systems) running behind the Linux ipmasq gateway. You can run ping, traceroute, web, ftp, news, email, secure web connections, and more, all transparently without configuring for proxy servers. It's as if you're connected with many IP addresses via a router!
In fact, you can use some other operating systems such as FreeBSD, that has similiar features or a "NAT" feature. "NAT" stands for Network Address Translation. Many of today's routers now even have a "NAT" feature, so it is possible that you can use these routers with your ADSL connection, although I have never tried this before. However, routers are not nearly as flexible as a Linux system.
There are some catches, in that you need some slight special configuration. For example, you need to do port redirection on the Linux system to make applications such as "CuSeeme" run properly (and only to one computer at a time, but that can be made automatically detecting).
I've been able to successfully run networked Quake 2, ICQ, Active Worlds, and other Internet applications, behind a Linux ipmasq gateway.
Another advantage of Linux, is that you have a full shell system that you are able to remotely access. With Linux having source code included, you can even recompile the kernel and reboot remotely, if you are daringly inclined to do so. ;-)
You get a lot of perks with Linux too. By having programs like sendmail already configured by default in a typical RedHat Linux 5.0 system, you can have unlimited email addresses such as "yourname@cpu####.adsl.bellglobal.com" or using your own domain name, if you have registered one. If you are technically inclined, you can even run your very own DNS service too for your domain name! (For myself, I am using Magma to do nameserver providing for my marky.com address). By default, you have a FTP server and web server configured with most Linux distributions as well.
You get the unix goodies like X-windows, telnet, ftp, MUD's, tin, slrn, perl, etc, all remotely accessible, with Linux too, if you have ever had an interest in UNIX before.
Please note, that Sympatico and Bell do not support networking multiple computers together, although they presently do not complain about such arrangements, provided you do this for personal purposes only, and for legal purposes only. I heard Sympatico is known to complain if you try to use the ADSL connection for profit or for heavy hosting of "warez" sites, though I know a lot of people who have been able to use their ADSL connections for brochure-style websites for their home office businesses, without Sympatico complaining.
The important thing to keep in mind, is that you need to get your LAN working independently of the ADSL modem. You can use a hub, or a hubless Ethernet network for the main LAN, but you will need a separate second Ethernet card in the main gateway system with an RJ45 jack, and directly connected only to the ADSL modem. This applies regardless of whether or not you are using Linux IP Masquerading, Wingate, firewall, proxy server, or another solution to share one ADSL connection among multiple computers in your home.
I only use a 486Dx4-100 for the Linux, and when my Windows computer behind this Linux gateway is downloading at 250 kilobytes per second, the CPU utilization on the Linux system is only 5%. If you only use the Linux system as a router style system, and not log onto it to run your stuff, you can probably get away with a fast 386DX or a slow 486DX running at 25 or 33 Mhz, with only 8 megabytes of RAM and only a 210 megabyte HD. You would still be able to route to your small LAN at over 200 kilobytes per second. Just make sure you have at least full duplex 16-bit Ethernet. Right now I am using NE2000 ISA cards.
Of course, the faster the system, the better. Then you would be able to run cool futuristic stuff such as an X-windows interface that's far ahead of Windows 98, one that uses very fancy non-rectangular window frames ;-) at: http://www.rasterman.com/screenshots.html
Yes, yes, I know you want to ask me a lot of questions, but
bear in mind that I have limited time and too much email ;-) If you already have Linux,
please look in your /usr/doc/HOWTO/ directory for more information. The NET-3-HOWTO
document will tell you more about IP Masquerading. There is a lot of helpful information
at these websites, especially if you are new to
Linux:
http://ipmasq.home.ml.org
- Setting up ipmasq
http://masqapps.home.ml.org - Config nonstandard apps for ipmasq
http://www.linux.org - General Linux info
http://www.li.org - General Linux info
http://www.linux-howto.com -
Documents for Linux HOWTO's
http://www.linux-howto.com/LDP/HOWTO/mini/IP-Masquerade.html
What Happens to Your ADSL When You Move
Having switched careers to becoming a computer consultant myself, I have now moved to a new apartment this month (June 1998). This means I am suffering withdrawl symptoms from having no high speed Internet for some time :-(
Fortunately, I planned my move carefully. The thing is that
Sympatico and Bell Canada requires a minimum 10 business day
wait for any new installations for ADSL, and this includes people who are moving from one
location to another. These are the steps that I did:
Things To Keep In Mind When You Are Moving ADSL
ADSL Installation Delays
Some people complain it takes so long to get an ADSL connection installed. Now there is some good news now. They are now keeping to their promise of a 10 business day wait, unlike some of those 2 month waits that some people had.
This is because the initial surge of demand is now past, and the delays caused by the ice storm is now over. The demand for new ADSL connections is very steady.
If what has been stopping you from ADSL, is the installation delays, you will be relieved to hear this. I'm also relieved too, because of my own move!
The Sympatico High Speed Forums
Early this year, Sympatico offered me the opportunity to volunteer to host their ADSL discussion forum. To access this area, go to http://www1.sympatico.ca/highspeed/ and click "High Speed Zone Forums" and you will see my name Mark Rejhon up there as a forum host.
The purpose of my volunteer task there, is to keep the area organized, free of profane language use, to help answer questions, to help create topics for discussion, and more...
Feel free to send comments to me at marky@ottawa.com [2003 Note: Discontinued email address] - Just bear in mind that I get a good volume of mail of all kind every day including those related to my computer consulting work, and I have a computer consulting job that logs more hours than an ordinary full-time job, as well as the fact I'm still finishing my move! ;-)
Disclaimer: I do not work for Sympatico, Bell, or any of their related companies. I just volunteered for that Sympatico offer.
Thanks,
Mark Rejhon
http://www.marky.com
| ADSL Report #6: October 4th, 1998 |
Finally, after a long wait, I was able to compare an @Home Linux connection with my ADSL Linux connection. This represents the most detailed comparision in download throughput between @Home and ADSL to my knowledge!
All download tests were made on 1.5 megabyte files. Six tests were made on six different intervals during the last few weeks, on nine files on both ADSL and @HOME at approximately the same time. Care was taken to ensure that neither both ADSL and @HOME was downloading the same file at the same time from the same site, since they could interfere with each other's results. All KB throughput numbers are in kilobytes per second, at full 8 bits per byte. The index values are simply sums of the kilobytes-per-second values, to produce a 'bandwidth performance index'.
11:30am Fri Sept 18 ADSL THROUGHPUT @HOME THROUGHPUT
------------------- ------------------------ ------------------------
ftp.microsoft.com 6.77s, 222.86 KB/s 368.34s, 4.09 KB/s
ftp.netscape.com 6.41s, 214.58 KB/s 8.25s, 166.75 KB/s
ftp.ibm.net 23.51s, 62.53 KB/s 36.52s, 40.26 KB/s
ftp.adobe.com 22.79s, 62.17 KB/s 6.73s, 210.43 KB/s
ftp.winsite.com 80.18s, 17.51 KB/s 92.93s, 15.11 KB/s
ftp.agn3d.com 17.09s, 85.61 KB/s 31.46s, 46.50 KB/s
ftp.funet.fi 12.79s, 115.08 KB/s 40.46s, 36.37 KB/s
sunsite.unc.edu 6.34s, 233.69 KB/s 41.22s, 35.97 KB/s
ftp.mcafee.com 81.45s, 18.46 KB/s 16.12s, 93.32 KB/s
------------------- ------------------------ ------------------------
THROUGHPUT INDEX 1032.49 648.80
1:30am Sun Sept 20 ADSL THROUGHPUT @HOME THROUGHPUT
------------------- ------------------------ ------------------------
ftp.microsoft.com 6.69s, 225.50 KB/s 17.87s, 84.39 KB/s
ftp.netscape.com 6.61s, 208.08 KB/s 14.82s, 92.83 KB/s
ftp.ibm.net 12.99s, 113.23 KB/s 255.67s, 5.75 KB/s
ftp.adobe.com 6.75s, 209.95 KB/s 17.18s, 82.43 KB/s
ftp.winsite.com 23.17s, 60.61 KB/s 120.07s, 11.70 KB/s
ftp.agn3d.com 19.13s, 76.47 KB/s 62.78s, 23.30 KB/s
ftp.funet.fi 8.69s, 169.33 KB/s 149.66s, 9.83 KB/s
sunsite.unc.edu 6.24s, 237.55 KB/s 234.97s, 6.31 KB/s
ftp.mcafee.com 7.12s, 211.24 KB/s 13.89s, 108.31 KB/s
------------------- ------------------------ ------------------------
THROUGHPUT INDEX 1511.96 424.83
2:00pm Mon Sept 21 ADSL THROUGHPUT @HOME THROUGHPUT
------------------- ------------------------ ------------------------
ftp.microsoft.com 8.21s, 183.59 KB/s 42.79s, 35.24 KB/s
ftp.netscape.com 54.33s, 25.33 KB/s 5.04s, 273.03 KB/s
ftp.ibm.net 14.93s, 98.47 KB/s 60.34s, 24.37 KB/s
ftp.adobe.com 10.37s, 136.61 KB/s 11.60s, 122.14 KB/s
ftp.winsite.com 23.25s, 60.39 KB/s 252.49s, 5.56 KB/s
ftp.agn3d.com 28.61s, 51.13 KB/s 28.20s, 51.88 KB/s
ftp.funet.fi 9.45s, 155.80 KB/s 39.86s, 36.92 KB/s
sunsite.unc.edu 6.32s, 234.48 KB/s 5.04s, 294.00 KB/s
ftp.mcafee.com 48.86s, 30.78 KB/s 6.81s, 220.88 KB/s
------------------- ------------------------ ------------------------
THROUGHPUT INDEX 976.58 1064.02
10:30pm Mon Sept 21 ADSL THROUGHPUT @HOME THROUGHPUT
------------------- ------------------------ ------------------------
ftp.microsoft.com 6.78s, 222.50 KB/s 20.10s, 75.02 KB/s
ftp.netscape.com 5.99s, 229.88 KB/s 72.57s, 18.96 KB/s
ftp.ibm.net 10.98s, 133.85 KB/s 241.91s, 6.08 KB/s
ftp.adobe.com 7.71s, 183.61 KB/s 94.05s, 15.06 KB/s
ftp.winsite.com 34.38s, 40.85 KB/s 352.88s, 3.98 KB/s
ftp.agn3d.com 40.09s, 36.50 KB/s 55.38s, 26.42 KB/s
ftp.funet.fi 8.57s, 171.72 KB/s 126.33s, 11.65 KB/s
sunsite.unc.edu 6.29s, 235.62 KB/s 246.80s, 6.01 KB/s
ftp.mcafee.com 22.47s, 66.94 KB/s 60.14s, 25.01 KB/s
------------------- ------------------------ ------------------------
THROUGHPUT INDEX 1321.47 188.19
7:00pm Tue Sept 29 ADSL THROUGHPUT @HOME THROUGHPUT
------------------- ------------------------ ------------------------
ftp.microsoft.com 6.81s, 221.31 KB/s 32.30s, 46.68 KB/s
ftp.netscape.com 97.82s, 14.07 KB/s 25.14s, 54.75 KB/s
ftp.ibm.net 11.11s, 132.33 KB/s 88.74s, 16.57 KB/s
ftp.adobe.com 9.45s, 149.86 KB/s 61.91s, 22.88 KB/s
ftp.winsite.com 19.54s, 71.87 KB/s 142.75s, 9.84 KB/s
ftp.agn3d.com 18.54s, 78.92 KB/s 39.05s, 37.47 KB/s
ftp.funet.fi 8.84s, 166.58 KB/s 129.77s, 11.34 KB/s
sunsite.unc.edu 6.33s, 234.08 KB/s 69.76s, 21.25 KB/s
ftp.mcafee.com 7.45s, 201.87 KB/s 19.17s, 78.45 KB/s
------------------- ------------------------ ------------------------
THROUGHPUT INDEX 1270.89 299.23
2:30pm Sat Oct 3 ADSL THROUGHPUT @HOME THROUGHPUT
------------------- ------------------------ ------------------------
ftp.microsoft.com 6.69s, 225.39 KB/s 55.15s, 27.34 KB/s
ftp.netscape.com 6.29s, 218.89 KB/s 90.09s, 15.28 KB/s
ftp.ibm.net 18.98s, 77.47 KB/s 654.48s, 2.25 KB/s
ftp.adobe.com 7.54s, 187.81 KB/s 103.12s, 13.74 KB/s
ftp.winsite.com 14.15s, 99.21 KB/s 306.45s, 4.58 KB/s
ftp.agn3d.com 43.13s, 33.92 KB/s 95.82s, 15.27 KB/s
ftp.funet.fi 11.52s, 127.77 KB/s 273.94s, 5.37 KB/s
sunsite.unc.edu 6.29s, 235.63 KB/s 440.87s, 3.36 KB/s
ftp.mcafee.com 34.26s, 43.89 KB/s 25.03s, 60.09 KB/s
------------------- ------------------------ ------------------------
THROUGHPUT INDEX 1249.98 147.28
=========================================================================
THROUGHPUT COMPARISION SUMMARY CHART
=========================================================================
THROUGHPUT INDEX
DATE AND TIME ADSL @HOME DIFFERENCE
---------------------- ---------- ---------- ----------------------
11:30am Fri Sept 18 1032.49 648.80 ADSL 59% faster
1:30am Sun Sept 20 1511.96 424.83 ADSL 255% faster
2:00pm Mon Sept 21 976.58 1064.02 @HOME 9% faster
10:30pm Mon Sept 21 1321.47 188.19 ADSL 602% faster
7:00pm Tue Sept 29 1270.89 299.23 ADSL 324% faster
2:30pm Sat Oct 3 1249.98 147.28 ADSL 748% faster
---------------------- ---------- ---------- ----------------------
AVERAGE 1227 462 ADSL 165% faster
=========================================================================
Tested files, carefully selected files whose sizes are 1.5
megabytes
ftp.microsoft.com/peropsys/windows/public/tcpip/tcpipdoc.exe (1544070 bytes) ftp.netscape.com/pub/smart/SM10R2.EXE (1409278 bytes) ftp.ibm.net/pub/Advantis/Windows/setup331.exe (1505582 bytes) ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/acrobatreader/win/2.x/reader21.zip (1450525 bytes) ftp.winsite.com/pub/pc/win95/games/solone.exe (1437990 bytes) ftp.agn3d.com/game_demos/pc_planet/tank.zip (1498081 bytes) ftp.funet.fi/pub/Linux/PEOPLE/Linus/v1.1/linux-1.1.33.tar.gz (1507153 bytes) sunsite.unc.edu/pub/gnu/bash-1.14.7.tar.gz (1518180 bytes) ftp.mcafee.com/pub/manuals/nnt314doc.pdf (1540005 bytes)
(These files existed as of October 4th, 1998. Not all of the files may still exist at this point)
Conclusion
In this test, the tested ADSL connection was significantly faster than the tested @HOME connection. In this test, the ADSL connection had well over twice the download throughput of the @HOME connection on average.
The following throughout observations are noted:
If the test results are accurate, ADSL is the choice for people wishing to have steady bandwidth that does not fluctuate very much from throughout the day and week, and for people wishing to see triple-digit download rates the most frequently. Overseas downloads appear to be much faster on ADSL than @HOME, with the tested ftp.funet.fi site.
It is noted @HOME has more potential bandwidth, but failed to break the 100 kilobyte per second barrier nearly as consistently often as ADSL did. Things could change if @HOME offers a premium 6.0 Mbps service and improves connectivity to the rest of the Internet (peering). @HOME would be an excellent choice for people who are more price-sensitive than throughput quality, since @HOME costs only $39.95 per month.
Also, some areas of Ottawa have ADSL but no @HOME, while other areas have @HOME but no ADSL, so some people don't have a choice when it comes to a high speed connection. In this case, people can go for what is available in their area.
A caution is however issued, that the test results are purely unscientific and do not cover a huge spectrum of ADSL and @HOME connections, on a huge spectrum of Internet sites.
Cautionary Notes
During the course of testing, there were more spontaneous download interruptions on @HOME than on ADSL. These downloads were simply restarted over again in the test. However, there was indeed a small amount of download unreliability near September 20th on ADSL, when there were ADSL problems occuring. In the middle of the testing period, there was an ADSL blackout, which means there were more downtime for the ADSL connection than for the @HOME connection during the testing period. (It should be noted, however, that the ADSL blackouts do not occur very often, and that @HOME has had problems at other time periods, to be fair to both high speed services).
At the end of September and early October, the Internet has been slower than usual in general for most ISP's. This apparently seems to have affected @HOME more than ADSL, perhaps due to the MCI backbone.
Both the @Home Linux and ADSL Linux accounts were on systems that were gateway to internal home LAN's. There is always the danger that a home user may be doing web surfing or a download of a video game demo on the LANs without me noticing. I took care to start the download tests when both Linux systems was not routing Internet data other than a few telnet connections at the most (using 'netstat' and 'w'). However, results may be materially affected by unknown operations going on both @HOME and ADSL systems, but testing on the Vancouver @HOME account doesn't seem to show this behaviour since the Vancouver speeds are similiar. I occasionally repeated tests on the ADSL connection right after the official tests, while doing some web surfing in the background on another computer on the same LAN connected to the ADSL link. It appears that web surfing did not slow down download results significantly (usually less than 5%). I also had less control over the @HOME system than the ADSL system, since I set up the Linux system on the marky.com ADSL connection.
Be aware that I was only able to test one Ottawa-based @HOME connection, and the results may vary significantly from user to user, depending on the quality of the phone line and the quality of the Cable. It also depends on how fast the ADSL modem is operating, and how congested the Cable segment is on @HOME.
Be aware, the links were not tested for ping latency or packet loss, although it appears that there is less packet loss on ADSL during the test period, due to the fact that less downloads stalled and spontaneously terminated themselves on ADSL than on @HOME.
Also, due to the small 1.5 megabyte size of files, the faster (three-digit) download speeds were negatively affected by the "throttle-up" period at the start of downloads. File downloads usually take a second or few at the start of the download to slowly accelerate to maximum download speed, so instead of 250 kilobytes per second for a large 10 megabyte download on ADSL, the download ends up being only 220 kilobytes per second for a small 1.5 megabyte download on ADSL. This has a minor impact on results. If 10 megabyte files were tested, both ADSL and @HOME would produce slightly better results on the faster downloads.
In other conditions, Ottawa @HOME could end up being faster than Ottawa ADSL. It is also noted that Ottawa ADSL costs $69.95 per month while Ottawa @HOME costs $39.95 per month, so you seem get what you pay for in Ottawa. However, both services represent a good speed improvement above old-fashioned 56K modem connections!
High Speed Throughput FAQ
Q: How were the tests done?
A: I tested using Linux accounts on an @HOME-based Linux system, and an
ADSL-based Linux system. I used a FTP script with the common 'ncftp' command, and I
recorded the results automatically to a text file. 'ncftp' displays the amount of time it
takes to download the file, along with the average throughput for the entire file.
Q: What were the specs of the tested systems?
A: The ADSL Linux system was a single Pentium 166 with 32 megs RAM, and the
@HOME Linux system was a dual Pentium 100 with 64 megs RAM. Both systems used an
insignificant amount of CPU (well under 10%) during the bandwidth tests, and CPU speed had
no effect on the throughput.
Q: Are they kilobits or kilobytes per second?
A: This may be a common question by computer neophytes. They're full
kilobytes, at 8 bits per byte, during the testing. 8 kilobits per second equal 1 kilobyte
per second. Therefore, 1 kilobyte per second is faster than 1 kilobit per second. As an
example, 200 kilobytes per second (KB/s) will transfer a full one megabyte file in just 5
seconds. In abbreviations "KB/s" and "Kb/s" capital "B"
usually denotes bytes, and lowercase "b" denotes bits, although many people
confuse the two.
Q: The tests are unfair!
A: This is not supposed to be a scientific test, but just a sample of
results from one @HOME system and one ADSL system. I did some brief verification tests on
two other ADSL systems in Ottawa, and one @HOME 3.0 Mbps system in Vancouver (all were via
Linux accounts) and the test results were consistent. I want to have accounts on more than
one @HOME system so that I can do an automated regular-interval (every 2 hours) test on
both @HOME and Linux.
Q: Why only 1.5 megabyte files?
A: For consistency, 1.5 megabyte files were scanned for and found on
familiar download sites, so I know that the file downloads are usually on obsolete files -
since it was important to keep the file size consistent for more consistent results. There
is a very wide variance in download times. While a small file of 1.5 megabytes usually
download very fast on Cable or ADSL, sometimes the server or backbone is so slow, it takes
more than 5 minutes for a 1.5 megabyte file to download! Since I have to test 9 downloads
in one session, and it is more important to test a large number of sites, this was a
compromise file size that was used. I also did not want to consume too much bandwidth
while testing on other people's Linux system(s).
Q: Why did you test only one @HOME connection?
A: I was only able to obtain access to one @HOME connection in Ottawa. I
also have a Vancouver @HOME Linux account, and did some preliminary verification tests,
that showed very similiar speeds to the Ottawa @HOME account. I am in the process of
obtaining more Linux @HOME accounts and a more automated interval form of bandwidth
testing, to introduce more fairness into the test results. If you can provide an @HOME
Linux account for future bandwidth testing, I will be happy to provide a Linux account on
my Linux box at marky.com.
Q: You didn't test enough FTP sites!
A: An effort was made to find more FTP download sites that were on several
different backbones that was separate from @HOME and ADSL. I also had to limit the number
of sites, partly because it would take too long to test too many sites. If you have useful
FTP sites to suggest, please send me email to marky@ottawa.com [2003 Note: Discontinued email address]
and let me know. I'll
evaluate the sites for a future regular-interval-style test involving at least two @HOME
systems and at least two Sympatico ADSL systems. I welcome the feedback!
Q: If @HOME is 3.0 Mbps, why is ADSL faster at only
2.2 Mbps?
A: Right now, it is widely believed that Sympatico/Bell (BGS backbone) is
still more well-connected to the rest of the Internet than @HOME is. Among us experienced
computer users, we say that "BGS's peering is better than Rogers @HOME's
peering". Also, Cable Internet has a bigger number of users than ADSL, which may be a
factor as well. In the future, this may change if @HOME and/or Sympatico makes future
improvements and upgrades.
Q: Does it mean ADSL is faster than Cable?
A: Not necessarily. This was a very unscientific test. However, in other
cities, Cable can be much faster than ADSL. In some parts of the states, ADSL is only 256
kilobits per second compared to over 2000 kilobits per second (2.2 megabits) for Sympatico
ADSL. Lots of things depend on infrastructure.
Q: What is the THROUGHPUT INDEX?
A: It is the sum of all "kilobytes per second" throughput numbers
added together. The index is a relative value determining how much actual throughput is
available on the link. Since all file sizes were the same, this is an approximate
reflection of the amount of throughput available on your connection. This is only a very
rough value, since I am unable to test a million different download sites, and may not be
as accurate as it could be.
Q: I already have an ADSL connection, but your
speeds are better!
A: This is because Linux downloads files faster than an untweaked Windows 95
system. There is no fear, you can optimize your Windows 95 system by tweaking it. Please
see my ADSL Report #5 article at http://www.marky.com/aboutme/adsl.html
on how to speed up your downloads on either ADSL or @HOME! Alternatively, you can quickly
download a registry patch that speeds up your connection at http://adsl.marky.com/rwin-speedup.reg
as long as you reboot after adding this speedup optimization to your registry.
Q: I have the tweak on ADSL, but I still only get
70 kilobytes/sec!
A: It is possible that your ADSL modem is connected at less than 2.2
megabits per second. If you download frequently and have never seen a download exceeding
100 kilobytes per second before, your ADSL modem may be connected at only 640 kilobits per
second. In this worst case, you may be able to call Sympatico at 310-7787 and get some
technician to come and check the system. If you are close enough to the switch office,
they may be able to switch you to a different copper-wire pair. I know somebody who
improved their connection from 640 kilobits per second to 1.8 megabits per second by doing
this. IMPORTANT: Before you call Sympatico, you may want to test the connection using a
different computer, reinstall Windows, or wait until you upgrade to a different OS (such
as Windows 98) before making a conclusion that it is likely the ADSL connection. If you
have done any tweaks that was done only for an old 56K (or slower) analog modem, you
should remove those tweaks, because they seriously slow down a high-speed connection.
Q: It's impossible to reach Sympatico for help on
ADSL!
A: If you failed to get help via calling the regular Sympatico support line,
you can call the ADSL sign-up line at (613) 310-7787. They may be able to help you on
certain things that the regular Sympatico support line was unable to.
Q: I like the speeds better than my 56K account!
How do I sign up?
A: Both ADSL and @HOME have websites with zip-code search engines, to
determine whether your home is available for the services.
For ADSL, see http://adsl.sympatico.ca/ott/
For @HOME, see http://rogers.home.com/sign.htm
| Important Note |
These ADSL reports are based on the now-discontinued Sympatico 2.2 Mbps ADSL service. As of 1999, Sympatico now offers a new 1 Mbps HSE service with its reduced speed and a reduced price, based on Nortel's splitterless DSL modems.
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