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921 posts

Ultimate Geek

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Topic # 25714 29-Aug-2008 20:43 Send private message

I've been running the isposure connection monitoring tool on my pc for some time now.  It's a great idea, but I have some reservations about some of the results it's telling me.

Most of my results are what I'd expect and are in the same ballpark as my ISP average (XNet).  However, the 'address lookup speed', which I'm presuming is a DNS lookup benchmark, is well off the ISP 'average'.

isposure says that my 'address lookup speed' is ~25 lookups per second, which works out to ~40ms per lookup, which also happens to be about the ping reply time that I get to XNet's dns servers, so that makes sense to me.

However, isposure also says that the average 'address lookup speed' for my ISP is ~244 lookups per second, or around 4ms per lookup.

Well, unless XNet have released cheap fibre connections to the masses <looks around excitedly>, I don't think that on average everyone is getting 4ms response times to ANYTHING on the net!!

Maybe I'm wrong and 'address lookup speed' isn't what I think it is, or somehow my internet connection is well screwed (seems fine to me!), I'm thinking that there's something wrong with the isposure database or something.

Anyone else have the same issue?

What scores for 'address lookup speed' does everyone else get?

Actually, looking at the comparison between my results and the average for a number of other plans (including other ISPs) some of the average 'address lookup speeds' are as high as 1000 per second!!  WTF!?

Also, if I compare my results to the average results for the plan I'm on, it seems that mostly the average for my plan (Flood Torrent) IS ~25, but there are a couple of spikes up to ~430 which I guess bumps the average up to 244... it still doesn't explain how anyone can get up to 1000 lookups per second tho!

Sam.


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Uber Geek

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  Reply # 160800 29-Aug-2008 20:46 Send private message

Same boat as you - I have 21 when my ISP average is 304.

I just ignore it really - doesn't affect me too much.




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Ultimate Geek


  Reply # 160811 29-Aug-2008 22:00 Send private message

I was getting rates higher (better) than my ISP average by around 100%...




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  Reply # 161181 1-Sep-2008 09:42 Send private message


Also, if I compare my results to the average results for the plan I'm on, it seems that mostly the average for my plan (Flood Torrent) IS ~25, but there are a couple of spikes up to ~430 which I guess bumps the average up to 244... it still doesn't explain how anyone can get up to 1000 lookups per second tho!

Sam.



I was a little interested in this too as my xnet connection came in with numbers similar to yours, but yet my maxnet connection got me some 900 lookups per second. Perhaps is a measurement of the DNS servers themsellves and not your connection?

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Ultimate Geek


  Reply # 161201 1-Sep-2008 10:16

I've removed the Isposure client. The weekly and monthly history seemed to tell a completely different story to the results of on demand tests. I'd get a recorded series of good results then it would appear to stick at a poor result that didn't change.

There's at least 1 ISP and presumably a Govt body referring to these results. I trust that someone is auditing the accuracy.



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Ultimate Geek

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  Reply # 161244 1-Sep-2008 12:50 Send private message

Yeah, I had that issue too.  I actually watched the benchmark process when this happened and saw that it was retrying the line speed test multiple times & then it appeared to basically time out and the result for line speed was the previous (low) result.

I believe in light of this that the issue is at the server (isposure) end.  I sent them an e-mail about it a couple of weeks ago but have yet to get a reply.

Maybe I should try to PM one of the forum users who represents isposure?

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  Reply # 163531 10-Sep-2008 17:02 Send private message

Easy answer...

The off the chart DNS measurements are measuring the DNS response from a local caching DNS server. It's likely that the DNS server on the PC is set to that of your router, which is acting as a caching DNS server. If you hardcode the DNS servers to that of the ISP (on the PC) then the numbers should drop back to a sensible speed.

But caching DNS servers are a good thing, and generally it's worth leaving them set to your router.

Cheers - N



921 posts

Ultimate Geek

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  Reply # 163575 10-Sep-2008 19:30 Send private message

Talkiet: Good thinking!  10 points for that one!  Changed my DNS server to be my router and indeed I now have a much higher score (~675 fyi).

However, this really means that the 'Address Lookup Speed' benchmark is actually meaningless...

BTW, the 'Line Speed' test has been failing for the last week or so for me, is this the same for you guys?

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  Reply # 163581 10-Sep-2008 19:45 Send private message

Line speed didn't work for me for about a week too - seems to work today.

I thought it was Vista that was stopping it (just installed Vista last week)




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