[Bloat] Bloat goes away, but with ~25% speed loss?

[jb]

My 2c - I wasn't planning on creating pages listing ISPs in order of
decreasing buffer bloat score.

And for speeds of course in the USA and most markets there are ranges of
products each with their own speed and price attached, so ranking ISPs by
any simple averaging of speeds is pointless as well.

However I think there is value in map-based speed results especially ones
that pin down average speeds and technologies to streets and towns, and if
there is any value at all in grading a single test for bufferbloat (or
latency to major cities, or jitter, or packet loss ..) then there is also
value in combining those statistics.

And even just pure speeds, one can statistically work out products and
create interesting comparisons, both spot, and changes over time. Even if,
at least in the US, there is no way to switch because your local cable
company is your local cable company.

There is also value in showing just how far a few ISPs are ahead of
everyone.

For example, in the USA, any speed ranking would put google fiber far out
in front, and Verizon FIOS far in front for upload speed. Why hide that
information? There may be a few ISPs that really get on top of buffer bloat
as well, and highlighting those, if they exist, makes sense to me. This can
be done without doing a top 100 chart full of nonsense.

On Sat, Jun 6, 2015 at 6:45 PM, Kevin Darbyshire-Bryant <
kevin at darbyshire-bryant.me.uk> wrote:

>  On 05/06/2015 21:06, Dave Taht wrote:
>
> 63% F bloat grade forhttp://www.dslreports.com/speedtest/results/isp/r3895-Orange%20Broadband
>
> I was disappointed to see the numbers for free, but wish I had insight
> into up vs down for their bloat scores.
> http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest/results/isp/r2816-Free%20France
>
> but... so wonderful to sit on a vantage point across the world! Way to
> go justin!
>
>   Hi Dave,
>
>  I'd like to urge caution about using 'whole ISP' bufferbloat figures.
> In the UK there are quite a few aspects that are quite simply out of an
> ISP's control.  If I were an ISP I'd get rather annoyed by the 'ISP ranked
> by speed results' sites out there, adding bufferbloat, certainly without
> up/down split out is adding insult to injury.  This is going to be a long
> post so feel free to skip/delete :-)
>
> In the UK for example the delivery technologies are cable (1 supplier,
> Virgin Media), adsl (many suppliers), vdsl (1 supplier, BT)  Virgin have
> most control over CPE kit.  ADSL is a free for all.  VDSL2 was down to 2
> modems (Huawei & ECI) but this is expanding outward toward free for all
> status.
>
>  ADSL cpe is mostly 1 box combined modem/router often supplied by ISP.
> VDSL is mostly so far a 2 box solution with 100mbit ethernet twixt
> modem/router.  Heading more towards 1 box solution (modem/router/wifi)
>
>  In cabled areas Virgin control network.  Each region/cabinet has own
> level of contention/congestion.  Where not cabled area they use adsl
> solution provided by BT.
>
>  ADSL on exchange by exchange basis may have BT only presence or 'a.n.
> other suppliers' presence, known as LLU eg Talk Talk, Sky etc.  If supplier
> has no local presence then offers service via BT kit.
>
> VDSL at present is BT Openreach only kit in near-to-home cabinets.  BTO
> trunk all data back to the exchange and then (I assume) it's split out
> across the various ISP backhaul vlans.
>
>  Backhaul links between exchanges to ISP POPs may be provisioned by own
> supplier (eg Sky, TalkTalk) or BT, all at differing bandwidths etc.
>
>  Some ISPs are much better at monitoring lines, latency, usage etc both
> CPE and backhaul.  A&A are excellent at doing this, not only do they have
> the tools, they actually use them!  They frequently identify latency
> increases (and in extremis packet drops) on backhaul links from their
> suppliers (mostly BT)
>
> A&A are a good example here: A&A are the ISP but they use BT backhaul and
> BT Adsl kit to supply service all over the country.  They monitor links and
> provision (ie purchase) bandwidth from BT with the aim of not being the
> bottleneck for their customers.  A.N.Other ISP may provide service in
> exactly the same way, using the same BT kit but not purchase sufficient
> bandwidth.  For the sake of completeness, A&A in 'TalkTalk' enabled
> exchanges can also use 'TalkTalk' backhaul
>
> Aside from any ISP backhaul issues or not, 'speed' is fundamentally
> limited by 'the last mile' of copper, changing ISP doesn't change that last
> mile unless changing technologies (ADSL->Cable->VDSL)  There's a
> fundamental lack of understanding in this country as to how 'broadband'
> actually works and I get dismayed by the many conversations I hear that go
> something like "You should use ISP A, they're great, ISP B are crap.  Oh
> but I use ISP B and they're great and ISP A are crap".  This is aside from
> 'what do you mean by crap?', slow all the time?, slow when up/downloading?
> (ahh, bufferbloat!)  (note to self:  You really should finish your blog
> post on this topic Kevin!
>
> BT for all their faults, do run rate limiters on the 'downlink' side so as
> to not (hopefully) overfill the pipe from ISP to customer (A&A have a means
> whereby they rate limit before BT if desired) so I'd like to think that
> 'downlink' bufferbloat should be reasonably controlled in this country.
> Where it all turns to rat shit is on the uplink, many, many different types
> of CPE, little under ISP control/specification (3rd party adsl
> router/modems available freely in stores)  Add routers running 3rd party
> firmware to the mix (OpenWrt, Tomato, Merlin's AsusWrt)
>
> I guess I'm concerned that another means of beating ISPs is being
> developed where the signal to noise ratio is actually very low and sensible
> interpretation needs to be applied.  If going anywhere near this I think
> showing up & down bloat ratings mandatory.
>
> In the interests of full disclosure I'm not actually an A&A customer
> (though I was a few years ago)  They're an excellent ISP with superb
> customer service and clue.  They are probably more expensive than I wished
> to pay for...customer service and clue isn't cheap.  Whilst my current
> supplier (Sky...VDSL2 so actually BTO) is good and so far reasonably
> reliable I *instantly* lose the will to live and want to slash my wrists
> when speaking to their customer service.  I do keep looking at A&A
> muttering 'native IPv6, unfiltered, customer service with clue' though.
> Breaking away from the 'triple play' service from Sky with the associated
> discounts and benefits is going to be hard.  Clue isn't cheap.
>
> I've rambled enough.  There's some fun to be had reading Adrian's battles
> with his favourite telco, example here:
> http://www.revk.uk/2015/02/congestion-case-study.html
>
> --
> Cheers,
>
>  Kevin at Darbyshire-Bryant.me.uk
>
>  Theresa May is watching YOU on the internet.  Join ORG
>
> https://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/2015/this-government-will-put-the-snoopers-charter-and-more-back-on-the-table
>
>
>
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