[billybob_jcv]

Network performance has two primary components: bandwidth and latency. Bandwidth is what everyone focuses on, but it's only half the story. Consider a pipe. The width of the pipe represents the bandwidth - a larger pipe allows you to stuff more bits in your end of the pipe and also get more bits out of the end of your pipe. Latency is the length of the pipe - how long it takes the bits you shove in one end to come out the other end. No matter how many bits you can stuff into your end, it still takes a finite amount of time for each of those bit to get from one end of the pipe to the other.

Latency becomes critically important because the typical TCP/IP connection is very "chatty". Every packet exchange actually requires a request to be sent asking if the other computer is ready, then an acknowledge, then the actual packet, then an acknowledge, then another data packet, then acknowledge, rinse, repeat. Every one of those requests and acknowledgements has to wait for the travel time - the latency. So, the ping time is actually much more than just one round trip, it's a series of round trips for all the requests, data and acknowledgements.

The farther you are to the server, and the more hops you take in-between, the worse all of this chattiness gets.

That's all happening at the packet level. There can also be a whole other level of chattiness that happens at the application layer.

Add some instances of dropped packets into the mix, and now you have to repeat packets and acknowledgements that have already been sent once.

Bottom line: Your available bandwidth can be high, and your connection can still "feel" slow.

Now - what can you do about it? Not much. Connect to servers that are closer to you and/or require less hops to get there. Make sure your own LAN is not dropping packets and has very, very low latency. Get your ISP to test your signal levels and the latency from your house to their POP.

Good luck!

 

[DigitalFreak]

  I think it would go faster for you if you snail mailed me video tapes for me to convert to digital format, and upload via my work.
 
I do feel sorry for you though. Do you have plans for national gigabit networks? 

There's been plans for years and although I haven't looked into it in ages there is a lot faster service available but I'm not going to pay 75 or 100 bones a month for it. The providers control everything and lie through their teeth always embellishing how fast their system is when the reality is its crap compared to the rest of the first world. All they want is the account paid on time and couldn't care less about anything else. What we Canadians need is for European, Asian and American ISP providers to set up shop and take away some of the monopoly's power. Until that happens nothings going to change. I blame the CRTC for allowing the Canadian ISP's to get away with the blatant lies and grey area advertising they do.
 
"Sign up for our 4G service and become part of one of the worlds fastest mobile data service...."
4G my ass!!

 

[veyrongatti]

Network performance has two primary components: bandwidth and latency. Bandwidth is what everyone focuses on, but it's only half the story. Consider a pipe. The width of the pipe represents the bandwidth - a larger pipe allows you to stuff more bits in your end of the pipe and also get more bits out of the end of your pipe. Latency is the length of the pipe - how long it takes the bits you shove in one end to come out the other end. No matter how many bits you can stuff into your end, it still takes a finite amount of time for each of those bit to get from one end of the pipe to the other.

Latency becomes critically important because the typical TCP/IP connection is very "chatty". Every packet exchange actually requires a request to be sent asking if the other computer is ready, then an acknowledge, then the actual packet, then an acknowledge, then another data packet, then acknowledge, rinse, repeat. Every one of those requests and acknowledgements has to wait for the travel time - the latency. So, the ping time is actually much more than just one round trip, it's a series of round trips for all the requests, data and acknowledgements.

The farther you are to the server, and the more hops you take in-between, the worse all of this chattiness gets.

That's all happening at the packet level. There can also be a whole other level of chattiness that happens at the application layer.

Add some instances of dropped packets into the mix, and now you have to repeat packets and acknowledgements that have already been sent once.

Bottom line: Your available bandwidth can be high, and your connection can still "feel" slow.

Now - what can you do about it? Not much. Connect to servers that are closer to you and/or require less hops to get there. Make sure your own LAN is not dropping packets and has very, very low latency. Get your ISP to test your signal levels and the latency from your house to their POP.

Good luck!

Thanks Billy! ^^ So in order to improve on ping for gaming I would have to move closer to their POP....... Well. I guess I could deal with ping spikes 

 

 

[Coq de Combat]

  There's been plans for years and although I haven't looked into it in ages there is a lot faster service available but I'm not going to pay 75 or 100 bones a month for it. The providers control everything and lie through their teeth always embellishing how fast their system is when the reality is its crap compared to the rest of the first world. All they want is the account paid on time and couldn't care less about anything else. What we Canadians need is for European, Asian and American ISP providers to set up shop and take away some of the monopoly's power. Until that happens nothings going to change. I blame the CRTC for allowing the Canadian ISP's to get away with the blatant lies and grey area advertising they do.

Is the Canadian (internet/network) market free enough for American or European companies to set up shop there?

 

[Coq de Combat]

 
Yeah I'll just keep quiet for a while about internet speeds. 

 

[Silent One]

 

[lee730]

 
 
Yeah I'll just keep quiet for a while about internet speeds. 

 
I hate you ... That would be great for gaming.

 

[veyrongatti]

   
I hate you ... That would be great for gaming.

+1

 

[drez]

  I think it would go faster for you if you snail mailed me video tapes for me to convert to digital format, and upload via my work.
 
I do feel sorry for you though. Do you have plans for national gigabit networks? 
 

---

 
 
Holy crap, I bought my Nespresso Lattissima+ yesterday. At first I wanted the silver version but upon inspection in the store, it was just too boring and it didn't give its pictures justice. The black one was even more boring. I would've picked the red one if it would've been there, but it seems outsold everywhere. The color's not as important as getting good (n)espresso in the morning, so I picked the white one which was pretty much as good looking as the red one. I just hope it keeps that whiteness to it.
 
My god, the coffee.. sorry, (n)espresso. Heavenly. The milk based (I'll just call it espresso from now on you coffee aficinado j*rkoffs) espressos are magical. It's really, really good and something I'd expect from a good barista. Now, everyone knows that a Nespresso machine can't really compare to a good barista, but those are few and far between here in Stockholm in my experience, unless you want to go to crowded hipster coffee bars where an espresso costs a small fortune, and you involuntarily have to toeflirt with some tall man with glasses who for some reason insists on saying "Me too, me too..." (CK) when he talks to his friend. No thanks, I'd rather enjoy mine at home in peace and quiet.
 
This machine lets me. The espressos and lungos, and milk based drinks it makes are just fantastic and really on par with good coffee houses here in Stockholm. The macchiato is the best I've had so far, and the cappuccino is just as good as the best cappuccino I've tasted in town.
 
What's even better is that not only was the machine on sale for $231, there also was a money back deal from Nespresso that I get $100 back if I buy a lattissima or maestria before 15 january 2014. I'm considering putting those $100 on my nespresso account so I can buy capsules with it - you can choose to get in your bank account as well, but I'd just rather have free capsules instead. So, the machine cost me a whopping $130 and was it worth it? Hell yeah.
 
http://www.amazon.com/DeLonghi-Silver-Lattissima-Nespresso-Capsule/dp/B005IOME0W/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1386135783&sr=8-2&keywords=nespresso+lattissima+plus

 
Glad to hear you found a good model, and at a bargain too!
 

   
I hate you ... That would be great for gaming.

 
Don't worry these days most games are laggy no matter how good your connection, because other players are laggy, or because there are no dedicated servers, or because the dedicated server code is too demanding for the server.  These days games use latency compensation so in effect the players with higher pings are at a disadvantage!  Gone are the days of 100 tick counter-strike 1.6 servers with ultra smooth gameplay.

 

[DigitalFreak]

  Is the Canadian (internet/network) market free enough for American or European companies to set up shop there?

According to Canadian law Canadian ISP's cannot deny nor limit service to areas of Canada by monopolizing their towers etc and thereby shutting out competition foreign or otherwise. What that means is all the ISP's Canadian or otherwise have to grant access to their towers to their competition in order to guarantee service to all of the public. In return they can charge the other ISP a set sum based on the bandwidth that's being consumed. What they don't tell you is the Canadian ISP's have been known to throttle bandwidth when outside ISP's are being used. Also, by Canadian law the market itself is protectionist in that any ISP that chooses to do business on Canadian soil must be Canadian owned by a certain percentage. We do have fiber optic networks deployed in Canada, they're mostly Shaw and I think Bell owned, but as I said before a fiber optic connection is expensive here. By the way, believe it or not Canadians are rated near the top for consumption on the internet in the world. YouTube is quite huge here. Everyone likes to kill time on YouTube when bored

 

[Coq de Combat]

   
Glad to hear you found a good model, and at a bargain too!
 
 
Don't worry these days most games are laggy no matter how good your connection, because other players are laggy, or because there are no dedicated servers, or because the dedicated server code is too demanding for the server.  These days games use latency compensation so in effect the players with higher pings are at a disadvantage!  Gone are the days of 100 tick counter-strike 1.6 servers with ultra smooth gameplay.

Yeah, I'm satisfied with it. Now it's about finding the correct pods for me. I got a free set of 16 different capsules, however, they're not enough for me to decide which ones I like the best. My taste memory isn't all that great and I had planned on grading them so I could compare, but then I kind of realized that since my taste memory isn't that great, how the heck am I going to be able to compare, or grade, one capsule from another -- especially if there has been a day between. And I'm not going to waste all those capsules at once to ABX them, lol.
 
 

Spoiler: Warning youtube uploaders, do NOT look here!

 
lol - NOW I'll shut up.

 

[DigitalFreak]

   

Spoiler: Warning youtube uploaders, do NOT look here!

 
 
OH.....
MY.........
GOD
(stares in shock)

 

[Coq de Combat]

 
According to Canadian law Canadian ISP's cannot deny nor limit service to areas of Canada by monopolizing their towers etc and thereby shutting out competition foreign or otherwise. What that means is all the ISP's Canadian or otherwise have to grant access to their towers to their competition in order to guarantee service to all of the public. In return they can charge the other ISP a set sum based on the bandwidth that's being consumed. What they don't tell you is the Canadian ISP's have been known to throttle bandwidth when outside ISP's are being used. Also, by Canadian law the market itself is protectionist in that any ISP that chooses to do business on Canadian soil must be Canadian owned by a certain percentage. We do have fiber optic networks deployed in Canada, they're mostly Shaw and I think Bell owned, but as I said before a fiber optic connection is expensive here. By the way, believe it or not Canadians are rated near the top for consumption on the internet in the world. YouTube is quite huge here. Everyone likes to kill time on YouTube when bored

Seems like it's free enough to let outsiders in, but closed enough to scare some off. I mean, if I owned a company, I'd be careful with such stipulations as certain percentages being Canadian owned and such, especially if they throttle speed. Pretty risky imo.

 

[warrenpchi]

 

Crap here as well...

Trade ya!

This is the best we can get here, without paying $2k /mo for 100Mb. It makes me sad.

 
Yeah, but look at what's going on with your upload speed... wonder what that's all about? 

 

 

  Crap here as well...
 

 
Will look at my own later tonight.... over tea, of course.

 
Don't worry, it's temporary. 

 

  Quote:

 

 
Oh man, I feel bad for you DF. :/ It must be torture uploading your Youtube videos on that connection. Maybe you should start making shorter rants hehe.

 
Something tells me he won't be ranting anytime soon... at least not in his next DAP video.
 

 

 
This is the Free version (Lite) of paid wi-fi here. I'm trying to save money... 

 

 
It's only temporary. 

 

  My mobile LTE service on the Note 3 
 

 

  Wow!
 

 

I've been happy enough with my fiber op connection.

 
DF, you should talk to Elnero! 

 

  On the brighter side of darkness, while I'm forever waiting for something to come down or go up, I tend to consume more tea. At least I'm hydrating... 

 

 
Funny how, alternatively, come up or go down also works. 

  How you been brother?
 

 
 
Yeah I'll just keep quiet for a while about internet speeds. 

 
YEAH, YOU BETTER! 

 

 

[gikigill]

Just got news that the NBN has been iven the green light in my area.
 
Looking forward to Unlimited Gigabit goodness for under $80 as Foxtel, the only cable provider in Australia is also jumping on board.