Re: Does Internet Speed Vary by Season?
Well, since it's been documented that internet speed / usage varies with the weather (it gets faster when it's sunny, slower when it rains) I'm sure some seasonal correlation could be found. Could you point to the documentation? I having trouble with language that sounds like one concept and I suspect is in fact another. Take as one example the basic digital signaling hierarchy. The specifications call for a certain rate plus or minus some number of parts per million. If they are within tolerance, the amount that they would speed up or slow down is measured in a pretty small number of bits per second. So I don't think
Hi Fred. I think you are referring, in the case of hierarchical synchronous architectures (SONET/SDH), to the absolute periodicity of the timing coming from clock sources. Frame slips and overwrites can occur when too many ppm lagging or leading are exceeded, as I believe was implied in your post. In contrast, I believe the notions that are being discussed in this thread have more to do with the effects of temperature coefficients of metallic conductors during shifts in outside temperature conditions, and the ensuing changes in the nominal velocity of propagation that accompany those changes, relative to the speed of light. In any case, I have been following this discussion from its beginning with a great amount of interest, finding it a great memory jogger from times misspent in my youth. I started a parallel discussion on my forum, where today I responded to another poster with the following observations, for anyone interested. [1]http://siliconinvestor.advfn.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=26010089 Frank --- fred@cisco.com wrote: From: Fred Baker <fred@cisco.com> To: Dragos Ruiu <dr@kyx.net> Cc: nanog@nanog.org, Joe Greco <jgreco@ns.sol.net> Subject: Re: Does Internet Speed Vary by Season? Date: Sat, 10 Oct 2009 14:27:07 -0700 On Oct 9, 2009, at 5:38 PM, Dragos Ruiu wrote: the speed of the links is materially changing. If on the other hand we are discussing the volume of traffic using that available capacity, it is absolutely clear that there are diurnal, weekly, and seasonal variations as well as growth in time. Are we talking about bit rate, which one might expect to be modified by environmental characteristics and is in fact very tightly controlled to prevent that, or traffic volume? References 1. http://siliconinvestor.advfn.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=26010089
Well, since it's been documented that internet speed / usage varies with the weather (it gets faster when it's sunny, slower when it rains) I'm sure some seasonal correlation could be found. Could you point to the documentation? I having trouble with language that sounds like one concept and I suspect is in fact another. Take as one example the basic digital signaling hierarchy. The specifications call for a certain rate plus or minus some number of parts per million. If they are within tolerance, the amount that they would speed up or slow down is measured in a pretty small number of bits per second. So I don't think
Maybe I'm way off.. Maybe its view of KISS but as engineers we should all be looking for the simplest answer. To me they key in Dragos' post was usage. All physics aside, the warm weather (seasonal) people go out more, use the internet less. In cold months, we stay in, use the net more. As for document any of us that run networks have seen this well document going back many years in our mrgt graphs. But then maybe he was refering to the physics, and I just try to simplify things to much. Have. Good weekend all! -jim Sent from my BlackBerry device on the Rogers Wireless Network -----Original Message----- From: "Frank A. Coluccio" <frank@fttx.org> Date: Sat, 10 Oct 2009 17:32:36 To: Fred Baker<fred@cisco.com> Cc: <nanog@nanog.org>; <jgreco@ns.sol.net> Subject: Re: Does Internet Speed Vary by Season? Hi Fred. I think you are referring, in the case of hierarchical synchronous architectures (SONET/SDH), to the absolute periodicity of the timing coming from clock sources. Frame slips and overwrites can occur when too many ppm lagging or leading are exceeded, as I believe was implied in your post. In contrast, I believe the notions that are being discussed in this thread have more to do with the effects of temperature coefficients of metallic conductors during shifts in outside temperature conditions, and the ensuing changes in the nominal velocity of propagation that accompany those changes, relative to the speed of light. In any case, I have been following this discussion from its beginning with a great amount of interest, finding it a great memory jogger from times misspent in my youth. I started a parallel discussion on my forum, where today I responded to another poster with the following observations, for anyone interested. [1]http://siliconinvestor.advfn.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=26010089 Frank --- fred@cisco.com wrote: From: Fred Baker <fred@cisco.com> To: Dragos Ruiu <dr@kyx.net> Cc: nanog@nanog.org, Joe Greco <jgreco@ns.sol.net> Subject: Re: Does Internet Speed Vary by Season? Date: Sat, 10 Oct 2009 14:27:07 -0700 On Oct 9, 2009, at 5:38 PM, Dragos Ruiu wrote: the speed of the links is materially changing. If on the other hand we are discussing the volume of traffic using that available capacity, it is absolutely clear that there are diurnal, weekly, and seasonal variations as well as growth in time. Are we talking about bit rate, which one might expect to be modified by environmental characteristics and is in fact very tightly controlled to prevent that, or traffic volume? References 1. http://siliconinvestor.advfn.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=26010089
Maybe I'm way off.. Maybe its view of KISS but as engineers we should all be looking for the simplest answer. To me they key in Dragos' post was usage. All physics aside, the warm weather (seasonal) people go out more, use the internet less. In cold months, we stay in, use the net more. As for document any of us that run networks have seen this well document going back many years in our mrgt graphs. But then maybe he was refering to the physics, and I just try to simplify things to much.
Usage has an effect on overcommit, yes. However, when you notice that the average connect speed goes down for a day or two after a cold heavy rain, that's not usage. There are not more than one modems connecting(*) to a port. So you have established that something about the quality of the physical layer has been affected. ... JG (*) In the late 1990's, I heard the most astonishing claims made by a new entrant into the Milwaukee ISP market, about how some of the "other" ISP's "shared" lines between customers and this decreased your speeds. They had no clue who I was, so I engaged their technical person for a while who set out to convince me that other ISP's really _did_ do this mythical line- sharing - multiple modems to one port. Until I started talking about the technical aspects, that is. -- Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net "We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me one chance [and] then I won't contact you again." - Direct Marketing Ass'n position on e-mail spam(CNN) With 24 million small businesses in the US alone, that's way too many apples.
On 2009-10-11, at 19:22 , Joe Greco wrote:
(*) In the late 1990's, I heard the most astonishing claims made by a new entrant into the Milwaukee ISP market, about how some of the "other" ISP's "shared" lines between customers and this decreased your speeds. They had no clue who I was, so I engaged their technical person for a while who set out to convince me that other ISP's really _did_ do this mythical line- sharing - multiple modems to one port. Until I started talking about the technical aspects, that is.
Not so mythical. Around the same time period, we found out about an ISP offering always-on ISDN BRI service for such a low price that it could not possibly make sense. We wondered how they could make ends meet at that rate until we found out how they did it. They daisy chained multiple customers' BRI lines together, using the second B channel from one customer to connect the next customer down the line. Once, one of their customers switched to our service and we reconfigured their router (a legitimate action: both router and BRI line belonged to the customer). Who knows how many downstream customers we broke by doing that. -Phil
On 2009-10-11, at 19:22 , Joe Greco wrote:
(*) In the late 1990's, I heard the most astonishing claims made by a new entrant into the Milwaukee ISP market, about how some of the "other" ISP's "shared" lines between customers and this decreased your speeds. They had no clue who I was, so I engaged their technical person for a while who set out to convince me that other ISP's really _did_ do this mythical line- sharing - multiple modems to one port. Until I started talking about the technical aspects, that is.
Not so mythical. Around the same time period, we found out about an ISP offering always-on ISDN BRI service for such a low price that it could not possibly make sense. We wondered how they could make ends meet at that rate until we found out how they did it. They daisy chained multiple customers' BRI lines together, using the second B channel from one customer to connect the next customer down the line. Once, one of their customers switched to our service and we reconfigured their router (a legitimate action: both router and BRI line belonged to the customer). Who knows how many downstream customers we broke by doing that.
A virtual ISDN party line! Cool! :-) ... JG -- Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net "We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me one chance [and] then I won't contact you again." - Direct Marketing Ass'n position on e-mail spam(CNN) With 24 million small businesses in the US alone, that's way too many apples.
participants (4)
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deleskie＠gmail.com -
Frank A. Coluccio -
Joe Greco -
Phil Vandry