Edu versus Speakeasy Speedtest

Thu Apr 29 17:48:51 UTC 2010

On Thu, Apr 29, 2010 at 9:53 AM, Murphy, William
<William.Murphy at uth.tmc.edu> wrote:
> I work for an Edu with multi-gigabit Internet connectivity and I get
> questions from users saying "Why am I only getting 14Mb when I run this
> speed test?"  I have got to believe that the various Internet speed tests
> (Speakeasy or dslreports) are rate limited to prevent someone from shutting
> them down.  I am able to get 300-400Mb running from a PC inside my network
> to NDT servers located on Internet2, so that tells me my border and internal
> network is healthy.  Can someone on this list shed some light regarding
> reliability and accuracy of these various speed tests especially for an Edu
> with lots'o bandwidth?  Thanks.
>
>
>
> Bill Murphy
>
> University of Texas Health Science Center - Houston
>

Best analogy I ever saw to teach Phd's why the net was slow:

Take a vacuum cleaner with extensions. Make a set of end connectors
from smaller and smaller tubes (garden hose, and straw I think they
were duct taped to vacuum cleaner ends). Have the complainer try to
clean up a mess with each of the ends. Ask them why it took much
longer with the straw versus the regular end. For the dimwitted (eg
2-3 Phd's and various honors) elaborate that the vacuum cleaner is
like your computer.. for things local and on Internet2 you get a
regular hose. On going to DSlreports etc you are going at some point
through a straw. [Actually i think the tube had a straw duct taped at
the middle... and had things painted on it saying "What we control.
What we don't control. What they control. What they don't control" ]
At this point most people realized networking wasnt' the people to
complain to]

-- 
Stephen J Smoogen.
“The core skill of innovators is error recovery, not failure avoidance.”
Randy Nelson, President of Pixar University.
"We have a strategic plan. It's called doing things.""
— Herb Kelleher, founder Southwest Airlines