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. If we can't get it right, how can we expect policy wonks to get it right? ----- Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions http://www.ics-il.com Midwest-IX http://www.midwest-ix.com ----- Original Message ----- 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.