Hands0n
2nd May 2010, 01:44 AM
Much is made about the speed of both broadband and mobile broadband as if that is the be-all and end-all of it. But that is far from the case. The actual quality of the service you receive is really much more important than just raw speed.
And so it was pleasing to see that the good folks over at speedtest.net have now got a new service on the go called Pingtest.net (http://www.pingtest.net/).
With pingtest.net you are able to take a measure of the actual quality of the broadband service that you are receiving and, like with speedtest.net, whether that service level is consistent or not.
The tests below are taken within minutes of each other at 1:33am when the local transmitter should be little used.
At this time the speedtest result was a respectable one for being out in Kent. The local 3G Vodafone mast is about 200m away from where I am sitting :)
1098
Next I ran two sets of pingtests with the results below. What these reveal is that the test has resulted in a measure of service giving a Class "C" line quality. This is suitable for the majority of activities, but would not be good for gamers (high latency, ping times) and Jitter that would impact VoIP communications. A Class C service may also not be very suited for streaming video from the likes of the BBC iPlayer.
The two tests were very consistent but would need to be taken at several different times of day to produce an overall picture of what the quality of service is like.
Test #1
1096
Test #2
1097
Why is Jitter so important? Basically, Jitter is a measure of the variation in time between data packets arriving at their destination. Often this will be caused by variable congestion along the path that these packets typically take. This may be caused by your local facility being shared with other users at the same time such as the airtime or backhaul circuit associated with the local 3G mast. It may also be caused by conditions deeper within the Internet itself.
... jitter is the variation in the time between packets arriving, caused by network congestion, timing drift, or route changes.
A good read on Jitter as applicable to VoIP is here http://www.voiptroubleshooter.com/indepth/jittersources.html - although the concepts apply equally to any other type of data regardless of whether it is critical or not.
Either way, Jitter is disruptive to time-critical data such as voice and video.
And so the above pingtests reveal that the Vodafone mobile broadband service quality is fine for general purpose Internet use. It may, however, not support very well on-line gaming, VoIP (i.e. Skype) or streaming video. It is unlikely that any other mobile broadband provider will be able to better Vodafone as it is the 3G or UMTS technology that is the limiter here. Our next generation networks (LTE or Long Term Evolution) may be better suited, but these are still a few years off from being generally available.
And so it was pleasing to see that the good folks over at speedtest.net have now got a new service on the go called Pingtest.net (http://www.pingtest.net/).
With pingtest.net you are able to take a measure of the actual quality of the broadband service that you are receiving and, like with speedtest.net, whether that service level is consistent or not.
The tests below are taken within minutes of each other at 1:33am when the local transmitter should be little used.
At this time the speedtest result was a respectable one for being out in Kent. The local 3G Vodafone mast is about 200m away from where I am sitting :)
1098
Next I ran two sets of pingtests with the results below. What these reveal is that the test has resulted in a measure of service giving a Class "C" line quality. This is suitable for the majority of activities, but would not be good for gamers (high latency, ping times) and Jitter that would impact VoIP communications. A Class C service may also not be very suited for streaming video from the likes of the BBC iPlayer.
The two tests were very consistent but would need to be taken at several different times of day to produce an overall picture of what the quality of service is like.
Test #1
1096
Test #2
1097
Why is Jitter so important? Basically, Jitter is a measure of the variation in time between data packets arriving at their destination. Often this will be caused by variable congestion along the path that these packets typically take. This may be caused by your local facility being shared with other users at the same time such as the airtime or backhaul circuit associated with the local 3G mast. It may also be caused by conditions deeper within the Internet itself.
... jitter is the variation in the time between packets arriving, caused by network congestion, timing drift, or route changes.
A good read on Jitter as applicable to VoIP is here http://www.voiptroubleshooter.com/indepth/jittersources.html - although the concepts apply equally to any other type of data regardless of whether it is critical or not.
Either way, Jitter is disruptive to time-critical data such as voice and video.
And so the above pingtests reveal that the Vodafone mobile broadband service quality is fine for general purpose Internet use. It may, however, not support very well on-line gaming, VoIP (i.e. Skype) or streaming video. It is unlikely that any other mobile broadband provider will be able to better Vodafone as it is the 3G or UMTS technology that is the limiter here. Our next generation networks (LTE or Long Term Evolution) may be better suited, but these are still a few years off from being generally available.