Broadband ISPs' performance laid bare

Stuart Corner
Monday, 16 June 2008 05:27

Opinion and Analysis

Broadband services are sold on three parameters: speed, download quotas and price, but there are many other factors determining the overall quality of the service and the user's experience. And in New Zealand the performance of different providers has for the first time been laid bare for all to see.

The revelation comes in the first of what will be regular quarterly reports from New Zealand trade watchdog the Commerce Commission.  The Commission has hired UK based Internet performance monitoring specialist Epitiro, backed up by IDC, to measure the quality of service provided by New Zealand's ISPs. When the deal was announced last November, Epitiro claimed that the Commerce Commission  would be the first regulatory body in the world to use this kind of service.

To compile the report, Epitiro has measured thirteen ISPs every fifteen minutes on a 24/7 basis across eleven sites in Auckland, Hamilton, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin. Performance is evaluated on eight key performance parameters which impact the end user's broadband experience. They are:

- Synchronisation speed: the speed at which the customer modem connects to the ISP. It represents the maximum speed at which their connection is able to operate;

- Time to Connect: this measures the average time that it takes for an ISP to recognise a broadband modem and connect it to the network after it is turned on;

- Cached HTTP: the cached HTTP download speed test indicates how quickly an ISP can distribute content over the New Zealand portion of their network by testing how fast specific web pages are downloaded;

- Non-cached HTTP: this test provides an estimate of the user experience in downloading web pages from foreign locations;

- Ping performance: this is a measure of how quickly the ISP's network can respond to a request: it is a measure of latency.

 - DNS test: this test records the time taken to resolve a fully qualified domain name to a corresponding IP address;

- Email round trip: this test measures the time taken for an email to be sent over the Internet using the ISP's mail servers;

- Packet loss performance: this test records packet loss during all the individual tests as well as overall packet loss while the tests were being run.

The specific outcomes will be of primarily interest to New Zealanders, but for broadband customers everywhere they show how much performance can vary, and more importantly that big is not always best.
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