xplornet contact or any experience with their satellite service?

Brian J. Murrell brian at interlinx.bc.ca
Tue Apr 21 11:58:08 UTC 2020


A friend of mine just recently got Xplornet satellite service at his
rural home.  I'm well aware of the latency issues with satellite
although frankly his latency is much better than I had feared it would
be and is around 600-700ms.

But what seems to be worse than the latency is the "burstiness" of the
traffic and I am just wondering if that is normal/expected for
satellite service in general, and/or expected from Xplornet's service,
or if what I am seeing is not expected at all (i.e. not an artifact of
the satellite signal but rather a network management issue).

Here's iperf3 for 30 seconds sending data (i.e. upload speed):

[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bitrate
[  5]   0.00-1.21   sec  12.9 KBytes  87.4 Kbits/sec                  
[  5]   1.21-2.00   sec  6.47 KBytes  67.2 Kbits/sec                  
[  5]   2.00-3.00   sec  22.0 KBytes   180 Kbits/sec                  
[  5]   3.00-4.00   sec  41.4 KBytes   339 Kbits/sec                  
[  5]   4.00-5.00   sec  41.4 KBytes   339 Kbits/sec                  
[  5]   5.00-6.00   sec  55.6 KBytes   456 Kbits/sec                  
[  5]   6.00-7.00   sec  69.9 KBytes   572 Kbits/sec                  
[  5]   7.00-8.00   sec  89.3 KBytes   731 Kbits/sec                  
[  5]   8.00-9.00   sec   120 KBytes   986 Kbits/sec                  
[  5]   9.00-10.00  sec  86.7 KBytes   710 Kbits/sec                  
[  5]  10.00-11.00  sec   133 KBytes  1.09 Mbits/sec                  
[  5]  11.00-12.00  sec   184 KBytes  1.51 Mbits/sec                  
[  5]  12.00-13.00  sec   186 KBytes  1.53 Mbits/sec                  
[  5]  13.00-14.00  sec   159 KBytes  1.30 Mbits/sec                  
[  5]  14.00-15.00  sec  0.00 Bytes  0.00 bits/sec                  
[  5]  15.00-16.00  sec  0.00 Bytes  0.00 bits/sec                  
[  5]  16.00-17.00  sec  93.2 KBytes   763 Kbits/sec                  
[  5]  17.00-18.00  sec   264 KBytes  2.16 Mbits/sec                  
[  5]  18.00-19.00  sec   124 KBytes  1.02 Mbits/sec                  
[  5]  19.00-20.00  sec   157 KBytes  1.28 Mbits/sec                  
[  5]  20.00-21.00  sec   120 KBytes   986 Kbits/sec                  
[  5]  21.00-22.00  sec  86.7 KBytes   710 Kbits/sec                  
[  5]  22.00-23.00  sec   369 KBytes  3.02 Mbits/sec                  
[  5]  23.00-24.00  sec   197 KBytes  1.61 Mbits/sec                  
[  5]  24.00-25.00  sec  90.6 KBytes   741 Kbits/sec                  
[  5]  25.00-26.00  sec   193 KBytes  1.58 Mbits/sec                  
[  5]  26.00-27.00  sec   192 KBytes  1.57 Mbits/sec                  
[  5]  27.00-28.00  sec   189 KBytes  1.55 Mbits/sec                  
[  5]  28.00-29.00  sec   193 KBytes  1.58 Mbits/sec                  
[  5]  29.00-30.00  sec   179 KBytes  1.46 Mbits/sec                  
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bitrate         Retr
[  5]   0.00-32.20  sec  4.41 MBytes  1.15 Mbits/sec  388             sender
[  5]   0.00-30.00  sec  3.57 MBytes   998 Kbits/sec                  receiver

which averaged the overall prescribed "upload" speed, but notice that
it's not 1Mb/s in any kind of a steady stream but rather bursts of
higher than 1Mb/s speed followed by low/no speed.  At one point it was
2 seconds with no transfer at all even.

and here's receiving (i.e. "download"):

[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bitrate         Retr  Cwnd
[  5]   0.00-1.35   sec  46.6 KBytes   283 Kbits/sec    0   12.9 KBytes       
[  5]   1.35-2.00   sec  0.00 Bytes  0.00 bits/sec    0   12.9 KBytes       
[  5]   2.00-3.00   sec  67.3 KBytes   551 Kbits/sec    0   37.5 KBytes       
[  5]   3.00-4.00   sec  46.6 KBytes   382 Kbits/sec    0   40.1 KBytes       
[  5]   4.00-5.00   sec   105 KBytes   858 Kbits/sec    0   44.0 KBytes       
[  5]   5.00-6.00   sec  88.0 KBytes   721 Kbits/sec    0   54.3 KBytes       
[  5]   6.00-7.00   sec   141 KBytes  1.16 Mbits/sec    0   69.9 KBytes       
[  5]   7.00-8.00   sec   124 KBytes  1.02 Mbits/sec    0    101 KBytes       
[  5]   8.00-9.00   sec   186 KBytes  1.53 Mbits/sec    0    146 KBytes       
[  5]   9.00-10.00  sec   248 KBytes  2.04 Mbits/sec    0    206 KBytes       
[  5]  10.00-11.00  sec   311 KBytes  2.54 Mbits/sec    0    257 KBytes       
[  5]  11.00-12.00  sec  0.00 Bytes  0.00 bits/sec   43    194 KBytes       
[  5]  12.00-13.00  sec  0.00 Bytes  0.00 bits/sec   75    199 KBytes       
[  5]  13.00-14.00  sec   435 KBytes  3.56 Mbits/sec    0    199 KBytes       
[  5]  14.00-15.00  sec  0.00 Bytes  0.00 bits/sec   34    114 KBytes       
[  5]  15.00-16.00  sec  0.00 Bytes  0.00 bits/sec   34    140 KBytes       
[  5]  16.00-17.00  sec   373 KBytes  3.05 Mbits/sec    0    149 KBytes       
[  5]  17.00-18.00  sec  0.00 Bytes  0.00 bits/sec    0    162 KBytes       
[  5]  18.00-19.00  sec   373 KBytes  3.05 Mbits/sec    0    168 KBytes       
[  5]  19.00-20.00  sec  0.00 Bytes  0.00 bits/sec    0    171 KBytes       
[  5]  20.00-21.00  sec   373 KBytes  3.05 Mbits/sec    0    172 KBytes       
[  5]  21.00-22.00  sec  0.00 Bytes  0.00 bits/sec   14    141 KBytes       
[  5]  22.00-23.00  sec  0.00 Bytes  0.00 bits/sec    0    120 KBytes       
[  5]  23.00-24.00  sec   373 KBytes  3.05 Mbits/sec    0    131 KBytes       
[  5]  24.00-25.00  sec  0.00 Bytes  0.00 bits/sec    1    146 KBytes       
[  5]  25.00-26.00  sec  0.00 Bytes  0.00 bits/sec   14    104 KBytes       
[  5]  26.00-27.00  sec  0.00 Bytes  0.00 bits/sec    0    104 KBytes       
[  5]  27.00-28.00  sec   373 KBytes  3.05 Mbits/sec    0    107 KBytes       
[  5]  28.00-29.00  sec  0.00 Bytes  0.00 bits/sec    0    119 KBytes       
[  5]  29.00-30.00  sec   373 KBytes  3.05 Mbits/sec    0    123 KBytes       
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bitrate         Retr
[  5]   0.00-30.00  sec  3.94 MBytes  1.10 Mbits/sec  215             sender
[  5]   0.00-30.80  sec  3.13 MBytes   853 Kbits/sec                  receiver

Again, very bursty with periods of 1-2 seconds with no transfer.

As you can imagine, the bursiness of this makes for horrible video
conferencing since that cannot "buffer" the way single-direction
streams like streaming video can and the codec ends up using the "worst
case" dips as the speed of the connection and encodes for that.

Cheers,
b.

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