From: "Sean Donelan" <
sean@donelan.com>
To: "NANOG" <
nanog@nanog.org>
Sent: Saturday, May 29, 2021 6:25:12 PM
Subject: Call for academic researchers (Re: New minimum speed for US broadband connections)
I thought in the 1990s, we had moved beyond using average bps measurements
for IP congestion collapse. During the peering battles, some ISPs used to
claim average bps measurements showed no problems. But in reality there
were massive packet drops, re-transmits and congestive collapse which
didn't show up in simple average bps graphs.
Have any academic researchers done work on what are the real-world minimum
connection requirements for home-schooling, video teams applications, job
interview video calls, and network background application noise?
During the last year, I've been providing volunteer pandemic home
schooling support for a few primary school teachers in a couple of
different states. Its been tough for pupils on lifeline service (fixed
or mobile), and some pupils were never reached. I found lifeline students
on mobile (i.e. 3G speeds) had trouble using even audio-only group calls,
and the exam proctoring apps often didn't work at all forcing those
students to fail exams unnecessarily.
In my experience, anecdotal data need some academic researchers, pupils
with at least 5 mbps (real-world measurement) upstream connections at
home didn't seem to have those problems, even though the average bps graph
was less than 1 mbps.