On Thu, Apr 29, 2010 at 9:53 AM, Murphy, William <William.Murphy@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