{"id":19039,"date":"2011-03-13T21:09:00","date_gmt":"2011-03-13T19:09:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2011-03-13T21:09:00","modified_gmt":"2011-03-13T19:09:00","slug":"speedtest-net-broadband-stats-challenges-in-sa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/broadband\/19039-speedtest-net-broadband-stats-challenges-in-sa.html","title":{"rendered":"Speedtest.net broadband stats challenges in SA"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ookla recently launched its revamped Speedtest.net service, providing users with a fresh look and a more personalized experience through user registration.<\/p>\n

Ookla launched their Net Index service on the back of the success of its Speedtest.net service, providing companies and consumers with statistics about broadband speeds across the world.<\/p>\n

The Ookla Net Index statistics are often quoted by service providers in South Africa as an objective measure of their network speeds, but doubts have been raised about the accuracy of these statistics.<\/p>\n

Two of the main issues highlighted were the caching of speed test images and high speed test results originating from a provider’s core network rather than their access network.<\/p>\n

Ookla’s Doug Suttles responded saying that image caching is not common, and even in the event of caching the testing of access speeds will still be accurate.<\/p>\n

Suttles further said that the overall results from large ISPs in South Africa are unlikely to be influenced by a few high results from core network tests, citing results from Cell C’s network.<\/p>\n

“If we eliminate all results where test speeds exceed 50 Mbps then that number only drops to 3.65 Mbps [from 3.82Mbps]. I also tried eliminating the fastest 10% of their results from the average which resulted in 3.73 Mbps,” said Suttles.<\/p>\n

Average speeds may be misleading<\/strong><\/p>\n

One of the concerns which is more difficult to address is the fact that the maximum access speeds of subscribers using a certain provider or service can differ significantly.<\/p>\n

With ADSL for example, consumers have access speeds of 384Kbps, 512Kbps, 4Mbps and 10Mbps. A service provider (ISP) with more 384Kbps subscribers will have lower overall speed test results – even if their network provides close to maximum access speeds.<\/p>\n

The same challenge exists for mobile operators Vodacom, MTN, Cell C and 8ta. Despite the fact that their network and subscriber profiles allow for high speed downloads, end user equipment (data cards) may only support lower speeds and hence influence the overall statistics from the provider.<\/p>\n

\"JannieVodacom’s Jannie van Zyl<\/a> recently revealed that the largest percentage of modems on the Vodacom network are 3.6Mbps devices which means that they cannot take full advantage of Vodacom’s 14.4Mbps and 21Mbps capable sites.<\/p>\n

“The first 3G modems deployed on the Vodacom network were 384Kb\/s! These were quickly followed by 1.8Mb\/s and then 3.6Mb\/s. Later on 7.2, 14.4 and 21.2Mb\/s were introduced. Most of the lower speed modems are still active on the network and it is obvious that they can never obtain a throughput result in excess of their maximum speed, even if the network supports a higher speed,” explained Van Zyl.<\/p>\n

“In addition, millions of GPRS\/EDGE devices, with a practical upper limit of round 256Kb\/s, are active on the network. It is clear that running tests from such a diverse pool of modems will result in results more indicative of the modem distribution than the average speed the network itself is capable of.”<\/p>\n

Ookla (Speedtest.net) responds<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ookla’s Doug Suttles<\/a> agrees that the distribution of speed tiers is indeed a challenge, but said that they must still aggregate results.<\/p>\n

“For the Download Index we simply lump it all together. To dig deeper we collect survey data and identify tiers for our Value Index, but not enough data gets collected for South Africa,” said Suttles.<\/p>\n

Suttles added that their US data and ‘Promise Index’ provide consumers with very accurate stats and ways to assess the value of certain offerings.<\/p>\n

“These allow us to show if people are getting what they pay for and who gets the most speed for their money. I’ll look more closely at the South Africa survey data and see just how shy of our limits things are to make the Value and Promise indices active,” said Suttles.<\/p>\n

Speedtest broadband challenges<\/strong><\/a> << Comments and views<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Industry experts highlight challenges with stats reported by Speedtest.net\u2019s Net Index service<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-broadband"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19039"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19039"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19039\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}