<div dir="ltr">My 2c - I wasn't planning on creating pages listing ISPs in order of decreasing buffer bloat score.<div><br></div><div>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.</div><div><br></div><div>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.</div><div><br></div><div>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.</div><div><br></div><div>There is also value in showing just how far a few ISPs are ahead of everyone. </div><div><br></div><div>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.</div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sat, Jun 6, 2015 at 6:45 PM, Kevin Darbyshire-Bryant <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:kevin@darbyshire-bryant.me.uk" target="_blank">kevin@darbyshire-bryant.me.uk</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
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<div>On 05/06/2015 21:06, Dave Taht wrote:<br>
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<blockquote type="cite">
<pre>63% F bloat grade for
<a href="http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest/results/isp/r3895-Orange%20Broadband" target="_blank">http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest/results/isp/r3895-Orange%20Broadband</a>
I was disappointed to see the numbers for free, but wish I had insight
into up vs down for their bloat scores.
<a href="http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest/results/isp/r2816-Free%20France" target="_blank">http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest/results/isp/r2816-Free%20France</a>
but... so wonderful to sit on a vantage point across the world! Way to
go justin!
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<div><span></span></div>
<div>
<div>Hi Dave,</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>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 :-)<br>
</div>
<div><br>
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.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>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)<br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>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.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Backhaul links between exchanges to ISP POPs may be
provisioned by own supplier (eg Sky, TalkTalk) or BT, all at
differing bandwidths etc.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>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)<br>
<br>
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 <br>
<br>
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!<br>
<br>
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)<br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
I've rambled enough. There's some fun to be had reading
Adrian's battles with his favourite telco, example here:
<a href="http://www.revk.uk/2015/02/congestion-case-study.html" target="_blank">http://www.revk.uk/2015/02/congestion-case-study.html</a><br>
<br>
<div><span>--</span>
<div>Cheers,</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><a href="mailto:Kevin@Darbyshire-Bryant.me.uk" target="_blank">Kevin@Darbyshire-Bryant.me.uk</a></div>
</div>
<div><span style="background-color:rgba(255,255,255,0)"><br>
</span></div>
<div><span style="background-color:rgba(255,255,255,0)">Theresa
May is watching YOU on the internet. Join ORG<br>
<a href="https://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/2015/this-government-will-put-the-snoopers-charter-and-more-back-on-the-table" target="_blank">https://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/2015/this-government-will-put-the-snoopers-charter-and-more-back-on-the-table</a></span></div>
</div>
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