servant74

Yep, this is the second cousin to speed in the performance arena. It would help in measuring differences in good service providers. Currently I would like to use it to compare satellite ISP's, but when I worked at a data center in Houston, there was one network provider that charged a premium for bandwidth due to it's low latency. Where others had faster connections for bulk data, low latency is better for small transactions on databases, gaming, etc. All that said, if there was a way you could add a latency figure to your tests in addition to the bandwidth, that would be fantastic. Or if I just missed it, please tell me where to RTFM .. that would be fine too! Love your service. And thanks for keeping it available for us!

In my experience, most service providers are more interested in billing rather than providing service. All except the super high $$ ISPs over commit service significantly at every point of their connectivity. Only very few service contracts have I seen had any 'non-performance' clause in them. When I had WildBlue, they were pretty good about giving refunds for 24 hour blocks AFTER I reported an outage. When it was out for over 4 weeks and I called every day they finally got someone to come out and make it work again. (One installer messes it up, then none were in the state, then they brought one in from two states over. Now there are two within 5 miles but we are using SprintWireless card (slower, but less propagation delay, so my sensitive test (wife) says it feels faster. So this is what we do!) During that time WildBlue also gave excuses that my transponder was out on the satellite, I suggested they put me on another transponder but that was 'impossible'. They said my earthstation downlink was out, basically weather in New York state... Why in the world do you EVER put a critical earth station in an area where there are known recurring weather issues (i.e. SNOW in the winter)? .. Oh yes, that added to the propigation delay, because it went through about 6 routers before it got dropped onto the open internet in Colorado? ... At least they could have dropped me on the internet in, oh say, NYCity! But nooooo, their network guru's were to smart to do something 'reasonable', so they PAID to have ALL the traffic dumpped to Colorado over land lines. ... Grumble, whine, ... These were my reasons for leaving Wildblue and going to ANYTHING that worked. Sprint wireless cards are by no means perfect, but it works. And yes, I wish I could get real bandwidth too (less than 2 miles from DSL access, $25,000 install fee if we want cable, or $650/mo for a T1 (not bad, but out of my price range)).

I would like to see added to testmy another field with averages also, for keeping latency information. IMHO this could help folks figure what system is best for gaming, using VPN over, etc. Personally I am currently on WildBlue.net (cable install was quoted at $25,000US and DSL over $100,000US --- not in my budget!). The download speed is pretty good, the upload is pretty bad and the latency is horrible. The latency precludes us from using IPphone technology (no caller ID in this area even on land lines - BellSouth/now AT&T, at least how ours is implemented, is pretty bad - even modems cannot work at over 24kbps per the phone company people due to issues with the phone lines in this area). Where we live there is not much choice. But recently sprintpcs has evdo available in the area and I am considering switching. The typical speeds are reported as similar to WildBlue according the the testmy.net database, but I would like to know how the latency is! Thanks for listening.