[Bloat] Updated Bufferbloat Test

Thu Feb 25 16:15:02 EST 2021

Hi Sina,

most excellent! While I concur with Simon that "keeping it simple" is the right approach, would it be an option to embed the details link into the results page?

Best Regards
	Sebastian

> On Feb 25, 2021, at 21:50, Sina Khanifar <sina at waveform.com> wrote:
> 
>> https://bufferbloat.waveform.workers.dev/test-results?test-id=6fc7dd95-8bfa-4b76-b141-ed423b6580a9
> 
> One quick edit, I just changed the route to these, the debug data is
> now available at:
> 
> https://bufferbloat.waveform.com/test-results?test-id=6fc7dd95-8bfa-4b76-b141-ed423b6580a9
> 
> 
> On Thu, Feb 25, 2021 at 12:41 PM Sina Khanifar <sina at waveform.com> wrote:
>> 
>> 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
>>> 