What does the Automatic Route (Test server) do?

[Pgoodwin1]

I see a temporary banner pop up that says it's using 23 different data centers.

I used to use a default Central server, and have about a year's worth of test data averaged so that I know what "Normal" looks like. It seems like I'm getting about 1/4 to 1/3 slower times using the Automatic Routing now than in the past on both the East Coast and Central servers. I've been having problems with my iPad Safari browser not finding the Central server. I wondered if the Automatic Routing results are getting skewed down somehow because of that issue. I would just like to understand at a high level what the Automatic Routing is doing.

What's strange too is that wen I choose the East Coast server lately, I get download speeds that lately have averaged 50-60% higher than my past experience. Did they rebuild the entire East coast Internet since Sandy? haha.

[TriRan]

Automatic routing is using a cdn to send the data meaning you could be routed to any one of cloud flares 23 data centers depending on which is closest to you as for the Dallas server not working C@BLE will probably have to answer that one cause I'm not entirely sure what changes he's made lately I just know they were extensive with the cdn addition

[Pgoodwin1]

Thanks TriRan. Is there a way to determine which test server is being used when in Auto Route?

[Pgoodwin1]

This chart is from this morning

This one is from mid November on the Central Server

As you can see (upper photo),when on Auto, the results are consistently lower than typical past Central server results (lower photo).

Also in the upper photo, not that the East Coast server speeds are double the Automatic server mode speeds, and about 50% higher than the typical in the lower photo.

Both photos represent typical -upper photo from today Jan 10, 2013, lower photo from Nov 19-20, 2012

[CA3LE]

The CDN may not be ideal for everyone. There can be a bad route to any of those locations as easily as to any server. If you're seeing majorly decreased speeds I encourage you to try the other test locations... I know now why you and others might not be able to see the central.testmy.net server... I had the 3rd and 4th nameservers set to my old ns. I corrected this, you should be able to see that soon.

By the way... I've got a really major addition I'm working on. I've got a brand new server up in what is considered by most to be the most powerful datacenter that Softlayer has. Dual Quad-Core (Xeon-SandyBridge E5-2620-HexCore) 16 GB RAM (split across 8 RAM slots)... 4 200GB SSD in RAID5 array... 2000 Mbps uplink. The current server is powerful but this new one is exponentially faster. RAID5 with those SSDs is VERY fast and reliable. Server is up and burnt in. I've just got a lot to setup and transfer... but I should have it ready for production VERY soon.

Back to the CDN. I'm using what's called "Origin Pull". The CDN routes TestMy.net's DNS to the closest server to the user. It then relays the request. TestMy.net sends the request to the CDN and the CDN sends it to the user. Time is taken on the client-side so the fact that the request is being relayed doesn't effect the calculation.

... Some will see improved speeds with this method some won't, it's just another way to test. I may put the default server back to Texas, I still think that a longer route is a better benchmark. But the fact is, more and more content is being delivered this way. I was really impressed with the way that Cloudburst worked with my application. But I'm also working with Google's CDN and a few others to provide more testing options. What better way to test Internet performance than through the networks that are actually delivering the content...

I just can't wait to get the new home server finished. It's a big process, I have to make very large database transfers quickly and get them switched on to the new server before I can even start setting the actual domain up. Otherwise more posts, signups and scores will be lost. I say more because there's going to be at least a little gap in the database transfer process. Most people won't notice, but there may be a 5-25 minute window of time that will get lost. But once the bandaid is ripped off it will be nice.

Obviously once this is online I'll post.

[CA3LE]

... the forum database is now running off the new server, so don't worry about posts between the transfer process being lost.

[Pgoodwin1]

The Central server is available to me again . Thanks CA3LE. I don't get too concerned about absolute speed numbers. I look for changes down as indicators of trouble. I'll do some testing on the Central server soon and see if it's averaging what I used to see as "Normal". If it's different, I may just baseline again on the East Coast server. The numbers are higher, so it makes me feel better. Haha. Our Cincinnati RoadRunner is just not very fast, but I'm not paying them for a premium service either.

That new monster machine Sandy Bridge dual sounds like a real animal. Pretty exciting stuff.

[Pgoodwin1]

And the Raid5 SSD and 2000 Mbps stuff you've got is pretty wild too.

I've been considering doing both a RAM, and changing my internal boot drive to an SDD on my mid-2010 iMac. Mine doesn't have Thunderbolt but does have FireWire 800 so I could do an external RAID. SSDs are now under $1/GB, but I would need at least 400 GB just for the boot drive, so I'm still thinking about it. Since I got the iPad a year and a half ago, I use the iMac less. The poor thing has been reduced to mostly managing the whole-house backups onto external drives and printing. So it's hard to justify upgrading the iMac right now.

[Pgoodwin1]

The Automatic server routing is working faster today. It looks like the speeds are the same as the East Coastbserver tests. The Central server is giving me speeds slower than typical (typical being about 8Mbps down).

I only ran 5 tests in succession on the Central server so I don't really know for sure if that is "truth"

I ran a few more tests on the central server and it does look like it's giving me speeds that are about 25% slower than what they were a month ago or so.

[Pgoodwin1]

CA3LE

I've run quite a few speed tests over the past few days. I've been testing on the East Coast, Central, and Automatic servers. A couple of observations/comments:

1. My average download speeds (averaging all 3 servers) are up from months past by about 38%.

2. The results of each test on any given server seems to vary a lot more than in the past. My max speeds are double my old average speeds. In the past the max speed were more typically 25% above my average. When I run 5 tests on a server, the min to max speeds vary a lot more than they used to. I now get numbers from 6 Mbps to 15 Mbps where my old average was close to 8Mbps.

3. My upload speeds are virtually always lower on the Automatic and Central servers now than they are on the East Coast server. In months past, my readings were always about 800 +\- 30 Kbps on the Central Server. On the Automatic and Central servers they are now consistently down near ~ 600Kbps +\- 50. On the East last server, measurements are consistently around the 800+\- 20 Kbps that I used to see as typical on the Central server.

in summary, compared to my prior experience on the default Central server last year, there is now much bigger variation in download speeds, and lower upload speeds on the Auto and Central server settings.This seems odd, but has been testing this way now for 3-4 days. The new results may indeed be more representative of how my typical Internet performance has always been. I was just making known these observations and wondered what you thought of it.

Here's 3 days worth of test data on the 3 servers:

Sorry about attaching 3 of the same photo. I thought I'd loaded 3 different ones. Here's the other two;

Pic 2

Pic 3