<html><head><style type='text/css'>p { margin: 0; }</style></head><body><div style='font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; color: #000000'>I think that just underscores that the bps of a connection isn't the end-all, be-all of connection quality. Yes, I'm sure most of us here knew that. However, many of us here still get distracted by the bps.<div><br></div><div>If we can't get it right, how can we expect policy wonks to get it right?<br><br><div><span name="x"></span><br><br>-----<br>Mike Hammett<br>Intelligent Computing Solutions<br>http://www.ics-il.com<br><br>Midwest-IX<br>http://www.midwest-ix.com<span name="x"></span><br></div><br><hr id="zwchr"><div style="color:#000;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;font-family:Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:12pt;"><b>From: </b>"Sean Donelan" <sean@donelan.com><br><b>To: </b>"NANOG" <nanog@nanog.org><br><b>Sent: </b>Saturday, May 29, 2021 6:25:12 PM<br><b>Subject: </b>Call for academic researchers (Re: New minimum speed for US broadband connections)<br><br><br>I thought in the 1990s, we had moved beyond using average bps measurements <br>for IP congestion collapse. During the peering battles, some ISPs used to <br>claim average bps measurements showed no problems. But in reality there <br>were massive packet drops, re-transmits and congestive collapse which <br>didn't show up in simple average bps graphs.<br><br><br>Have any academic researchers done work on what are the real-world minimum <br>connection requirements for home-schooling, video teams applications, job <br>interview video calls, and network background application noise?<br><br><br>During the last year, I've been providing volunteer pandemic home <br>schooling support for a few primary school teachers in a couple of <br>different states. Its been tough for pupils on lifeline service (fixed <br>or mobile), and some pupils were never reached. I found lifeline students <br>on mobile (i.e. 3G speeds) had trouble using even audio-only group calls, <br>and the exam proctoring apps often didn't work at all forcing those <br>students to fail exams unnecessarily.<br><br>In my experience, anecdotal data need some academic researchers, pupils <br>with at least 5 mbps (real-world measurement) upstream connections at <br>home didn't seem to have those problems, even though the average bps graph <br>was less than 1 mbps.<br><br></div><br></div></div></body></html>