[Bloat] Updated Bufferbloat Test

Thu Feb 25 15:41:45 EST 2021

Hi Sebastian!

> [SM] not a bug, more of a feature request, could you add information on whether the test ran over IPv6 or IPv4, and which browser/user agent was involved (nothing too deep, just desktop/mobile and firefox/chrome/safari/brave/...) as well as the date and time of the test? All of these can help to interpret the test results.

We actually collect all this data, it's just a little bit hidden. If
you take the test-id from the end of the URL and put it at the end of
a URL like this:

https://bufferbloat.waveform.workers.dev/test-results?test-id=6fc7dd95-8bfa-4b76-b141-ed423b6580a9

You'll get a whole bunch of extra info, including useragent, a linux
timestamp, and a bunch of other fun stuff :). We'll consider surfacing
this more at some point in the future though!

> Small typo "waus" instead of "ways".

Thanks for catching this! A fix is in the works :).

On Thu, Feb 25, 2021 at 2:49 AM Sebastian Moeller <moeller0 at gmx.de> wrote:
>
> Hi Sina,
>
> great work! I took the liberty to advertise this test already for some weeks, because even in its still evolving developing state it was/is already producubg interesting actionable results. Thanks foe fixing the latency numbers for (desktop) Safari. More below.
>
>
> > On Feb 24, 2021, at 19:22, Sina Khanifar <sina at waveform.com> wrote:
> >
> > Hi all,
> >
> > A couple of months ago my co-founder Sam posted an early beta of the
> > Bufferbloat test that we’ve been working on, and Dave also linked to
> > it a couple of weeks ago.
> >
> > Thank you all so much for your feedback - we almost entirely
> > redesigned the tool and the UI based on the comments we received.
> > We’re almost ready to launch the tool officially today at this URL,
> > but wanted to show it to the list in case anyone finds any last bugs
> > that we might have overlooked:
> >
> > https://www.waveform.com/tools/bufferbloat
> >
> > If you find a bug, please share the "Share Your Results" link with us
> > along with what happened. We capture some debugging information on the
> > backend, and having a share link allows us to diagnose any issues.
>
>         [SM] not a bug, more of a feature request, could you add information on whether the test ran over IPv6 or IPv4, and which browser/user agent was involved (nothing too deep, just desktop/mobile and firefox/chrome/safari/brave/...) as well as the date and time of the test? All of these can help to interpret the test results.
>
>
> >
> > This is really more of a passion project than anything else for us –
> > we don’t anticipate we’ll try to commercialize it or anything like
> > that. We're very thankful for all the work the folks on this list have
> > done to identify and fix bufferbloat, and hope this is a useful
> > contribution. I’ve personally been very frustrated by bufferbloat on a
> > range of devices, and decided it might be helpful to build another
> > bufferbloat test when the DSLReports test was down at some point last
> > year.
> >
> > Our goals with this project were:
> >  * To build a second solid bufferbloat test in case DSLReports goes down again.
> >  * Build a test where bufferbloat is front and center as the primary
> > purpose of the test, rather than just a feature.
> >  * Try to explain bufferbloat and its effect on a user's connection
> > as clearly as possible for a lay audience.
> >
> > A few notes:
> >  * On the backend, we’re using Cloudflare’s CDN to perform the actual
> > download and upload speed test. I know John Graham-Cunning has posted
> > to this list in the past; if he or anyone from Cloudflare sees this,
> > we’d love some help. Our Cloudflare Workers are being
> > bandwidth-throttled due to having a non-enterprise grade account.
> > We’ve worked around this in a kludgy way, but we’d love to get it
> > resolved.
>
>         [SM] I think this was a decent decision, as it seems your tests has less issues even filling 1Gbps links than most others.
>
>
> >  * We have lots of ideas for improvements, e.g. simultaneous
> > upload/downloads, trying different file size chunks, time-series
> > latency graphs, using WebRTC to test UDP traffic etc, but in the
> > interest of getting things launched we're sticking with the current
> > featureset.
>
>         [SM] Reasonable trade-off, and hopefully potential for pleasant surprises in the future ;)
>
> >  * There are a lot of browser-specific workarounds that we had to
> > implement, and latency itself is measured in different ways on
> > Safari/Webkit vs Chromium/Firefox due to limitations of the
> > PerformanceTiming APIs. You may notice that latency is different on
> > different browsers, however the actual bufferbloat (relative increase
> > in latency) should be pretty consistent.
> >
> > In terms of some of the changes we made based on the feedback we
> > receive on this list:
> >
> > Based on Toke’s feedback:
> > https://lists.bufferbloat.net/pipermail/bloat/2020-November/015960.html
> > https://lists.bufferbloat.net/pipermail/bloat/2020-November/015976.html
> >  * We changed the way the speed tests run to show an instantaneous
> > speed as the test is being run.
>
>         [SM] Great, if only so it feels comparable to "other" speedtests.
>
>
> >  * We moved the bufferbloat grade into the main results box.
>
>         [SM] +1; that helps set the mood ;)
>
> >  * We tried really hard to get as close to saturating gigabit
> > connections as possible. We redesigned completely the way we chunk
> > files, added a “warming up” period, and spent quite a bit optimizing
> > our code to minimize CPU usage, as we found that was often the
> > limiting factor to our speed test results.
> >  * We changed the shield grades altogether and went through a few
> > different iterations of how to show the effect of bufferbloat on
> > connectivity, and ended up with a “table view” to try to show the
> > effect that bufferbloat specifically is having on the connection
> > (compared to when the connection is unloaded).
> >  * We now link from the results table view to the FAQ where the
> > conditions for each type of connection are explained.
> >  * We also changed the way we measure latency and now use the faster
> > of either Google’s CDN or Cloudflare at any given location. We’re also
> > using the WebTiming APIs to get a more accurate latency number, though
> > this does not work on some mobile browsers (e.g. iOS Safari) and as a
> > result we show a higher latency on mobile devices. Since our test is
> > less a test of absolute latency and more a test of relative latency
> > with and without load, we felt this was workable.
> >  * Our jitter is now an average (was previously RMS).
> >  * The “before you start” text was rewritten and moved above the start button.
> >  * We now spell out upload and download instead of having arrows.
> >  * We hugely reduced the number of cross-site scripts. I was a bit
> > embarrassed by this if I’m honest - I spent a long time building web
> > tools for the EFF, where we almost never allowed any cross-site
> > scripts. * Our site is hosted on Shopify, and adding any features via
> > their app store ends up adding a whole lot of gunk. But we uninstalled
> > some apps, rewrote our template, and ended up removing a whole lot of
> > the gunk. There’s still plenty of room for improvement, but it should
> > be a lot better than before.
> >
> > Based on Dave Collier-Brown’s feedback:
> > https://lists.bufferbloat.net/pipermail/bloat/2020-November/015966.html
> >  * We replaced the “unloaded” and “loaded” language with “unloaded”
> > and then “download active”  and “upload active.” In the grade box we
> > indicate that, for example, “Your latency increased moderately under
> > load.”
> >  * We tried to generally make it easier for non-techie folks to
> > understand by emphasizing the grade and adding the table showing how
> > bufferbloat affects some commonly-used services.
> >  * We didn’t really change the candle charts too much - they’re
> > mostly just to give a basic visual - we focused more on the actual
> > meat of the results above that.
> >
> > Based on Sebastian Moeller’s feedback:
> > https://lists.bufferbloat.net/pipermail/bloat/2020-November/015963.html
> >  * We considered doing a bidirectional saturating load, but decided
> > to skip on implementing it for now. * It’s definitely something we’d
> > like to experiment with more in the future.
> >  * We added a “warming up” period as well as a “draining” period to
> > help fill and empty the buffer. We haven’t added the option for an
> > extended test, but have this on our list of backlog changes to make in
> > the future.
> >
> > Based on Y’s feedback (link):
> > https://lists.bufferbloat.net/pipermail/bloat/2020-November/015962.html
> >  * We actually ended up removing the grades, but we explained our
> > criteria for the new table in the FAQ.
> >
> > Based on Greg White's feedback (shared privately):
> > * We added an FAQ answer explaining jitter and how we measure it.
>
> [SM] "There are a number of different waus of measuring and defining jitter. For the purpose of this test, we calculate jitter by taking the average of the deviations from the mean latency."
>
> Small typo "waus" instead of "ways".
>
> Best Regards
>         Sebastian
>
>
> >
> > We’d love for you all to play with the new version of the tool and
> > send over any feedback you might have. We’re going to be in a feature
> > freeze before launch but we'd love to get any bugs sorted out. We'll
> > likely put this project aside after we iron out a last round of bugs
> > and launch, and turn back to working on projects that help us pay the
> > bills, but we definitely hope to revisit and improve the tool over
> > time.
> >
> > Best,
> >
> > Sina, Arshan, and Sam.
> > _______________________________________________
> > Bloat mailing list
> > Bloat at lists.bufferbloat.net
> > https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/bloat
>