10% is UPLOAD

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DonGould

3892 posts

Uber Geek

#10815 13-Dec-2006 11:26

Food for thought...

Data Rate:

Stream Type Actual Data Rate

Up Stream 960 (Kbps.)

Down Stream 7808 (Kbps.)

Yesterday I was running 128/7600.

Having the the 960Kbps. makes a massive difference for web surfing.

TCP uses acknowledgement packets.

About 10% of the traffic is acknowledgement data.

This means that a 128/8000 connection will never hope to deliver full speed as the up stream rate is effectively choking the down stream.

This is important to consider because it means you're paying for something that you simply can't get.

I just upgraded my connection and I can report that it makes a huge difference. Geekzone now just snaps up even though the download speed has hardly changed.

It leaves me thinking that this Go Large plan is just a crock. You'll never get a TCP connection rate faster than 1.5mbit even thou you've got up to 8mbit.

Cheers Don

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Bung

6477 posts

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Subscriber

#55360 13-Dec-2006 11:53

"I just upgraded my connection and I can report that it makes a huge difference. Geekzone now just snaps up even though the download speed has hardly changed."

Some Geekier types can argue the 10% figure, usual limits quoted are 4-4.5M download with 128 up.

Today it snaps up even on 128 upload. When it's slow it usually seems to be waiting for a response from some of the sites associated with the lefthand panel that is blank at the moment.(Oops not if I white list in Adblock blush)

grant_k

3539 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#55363 13-Dec-2006 12:05

DonGould: It leaves me thinking that this Go Large plan is just a crock. You'll never get a TCP connection rate faster than 1.5mbit even thou you've got up to 8mbit.

Juha says 3 - 4 Mbps (max) in this thread (refer to the sentence mentioning Engineers' Lab Tests):

http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?ForumId=49&TopicId=10772

But in my opinion, you are right: Go Large is a crock.

It's designed for people who want to consume large amounts of bandwidth without paying more than $49.95 per month.

As usual in life, there's a catch: You are trading outright speed for the amount of data available to you each month.

Go Large employs extensive traffic-shaping techniques to ensure that users cannot suck down so much data that they become a money-losing proposition for the ISP. Nobody has come out and stipulated exactly what that cut-off point is, but in another thread this morning:

http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?ForumId=65&TopicId=10808

It appears that XNET regard 68GB per month as a losing proposition. Other posters have previously said that 100GB per month is a definite money loser for an ISP.

No doubt, the exact cutoff point depends on whether you have a Max/Max line speed, or a Max/128k line speed as I remember reading somewhere else that Telecom charge different wholesale rates for the Max/Max UBS plans compared to the Max/128k plans. Which is only fair and reasonable as users on the Max/Max plans are getting a much better Quality of Service, as you have found.

You get nothing for nothing in ISP land, and while the "Go Large" type plans are an irresistible magnet for many people, they are often doomed to a very disappointing experience depending on their usage patterns.

Cheers,
Grant.

bradstewart

4335 posts

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Retired Mod

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Lifetime subscriber

#55366 13-Dec-2006 12:59

The maximum download speed for ADSL is 7.6Mbps, not 8Mbps so you will never be getting that.

Instead of complaining about the speeds on Go Large try reading this post
http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?ForumId=49&TopicId=10764

Think about how much data you are getting for $49 a month. If you don't like Go Large then change your plan.

I know plenty of people who are downloading around 4-5Mbps on Go Large so your 1.5Mbps theory is a crock.

DonGould

3892 posts

Uber Geek

#55369 13-Dec-2006 13:13

bradstewart: The maximum download speed for ADSL is 7.6Mbps, not 8Mbps so you will never be getting that.

Instead of complaining about the speeds on Go Large try reading this post
http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?ForumId=49&TopicId=10764

Think about how much data you are getting for $49 a month. If you don't like Go Large then change your plan.

I know plenty of people who are downloading around 4-5Mbps on Go Large so your 1.5Mbps theory is a crock.

Some valid points made.

I think you missed the 'intended' [1] focus of my post...

The full speed both ways makes a huge difference in my view. It's a good thing!

I agree that 'go large' has some benefits, I'm not going to argue with that. :)

Cheers Don

[1] - While intended, I do accept I might not have worded it well enough to convey.

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barf

643 posts

Ultimate Geek

#55376 13-Dec-2006 13:59

The TCP overhead is a given, what seems to exaggerate the overhead fact into a problem is when the upstream is saturated in a router's FIFO packet queue. By using a firewall (real firewall, not zonealarm) to limit the outbound traffic rate to ~90% of capacity, one can improve latency without sacrificing much throughput, even under high load. Probably a bit too tricky for most people, but here is documentation on doing so with Linux.

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Fraktul

836 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

#55393 13-Dec-2006 18:18

- ACK packets are not the same size as the received packet, except maybe in the initial handshake.
- Proportion of ACK packets to received packets depends on the total link performance, latency jitter and packet loss all factor into the this as well as your TCP stack in the way it calculates its sliding window.

Turning off interleaving on your line if this does not cause undue packet loss and configuring the local and remote TCP stacks for a higher latency and jitter environment would probably remove any issues with maxing out a 128kbps uplink while potentially reaching your theoretical 7680kbps downstream capacity.

If you have high jitter, crappy latency and some packet loss its not surprising the local and remote TCP stacks act conservatively and generate 'excessive' acknowledgement traffic.