State of the University’s Internet Connection
By Philip Smith, May 1, 2003
Over the past few years there has always been interest in the performance of the
University of Windsor’s Internet connection. Beginning in February 2003 we began
tracking our Internet performance on a daily basis using BroadBandReports.com1. This
site is used by Internet Service Providers (ISP) to compare their performance to the
competition. The site is also used by Internet users to verify the claims of their ISP.
The graphs below display the University of Windsor’s download and upload
speeds over the past few months. The University’s average download speed is 3518
Kilobits per second (Kb/s) or 3.4 Megabits per second (Mb/s) and our average upload
speed 4756 Kb/s or 4.6 Mb/s. Unfortunately, the network world uses bits as their unit of
choice while most people use bytes as their unit of measure2. Translating these numbers
to more common terms our average download speed is 440 Kilobytes per second (KB/s)
and our average upload is 595 KB/s. These speeds exceed what you can get at home
through an ordinary Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) or cable connection.
University of Windsor Internet Throughput
7000
6000
Throughput (kbps)
5000
4000
3000
2000
1000
22-Apr-03
Grand Average
20-Apr-03
18-Apr-03
16-Apr-03
14-Apr-03
12-Apr-03
8-Apr-03
10-Apr-03
6-Apr-03
4-Apr-03
2-Apr-03
31-Mar-03
29-Mar-03
27-Mar-03
25-Mar-03
23-Mar-03
20-Mar-03
18-Mar-03
16-Mar-03
14-Mar-03
12-Mar-03
8-Mar-03
10-Mar-03
6-Mar-03
4-Mar-03
2-Mar-03
28-Feb-03
26-Feb-03
24-Feb-03
22-Feb-03
20-Feb-03
18-Feb-03
16-Feb-03
14-Feb-03
12-Feb-03
0
Date
Download
Upload
The above chart uses daily averages. To compute these daily averages, we run
speed tests from a PC in IT Services to each of three sites four times a day. The three
sites used are BroadBandReports.Com’s East Coast speed test site,
BroadBandReports.Com’s West Coast speed test site and Cogeco’s speed test site. We
run these test tests when our Internet pipe is most active. The times are 10:00 a.m., 2:00
p.m., 6:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. By running the tests at these times to those sites allows us
to get a reasonable feel for what our customers are experiencing. They also allow us to
track changes in performance over time.
A local cable ISP promises a “Download … file transfer rate of 2Mbps for
COGECO standard high speed Internet service.”3 Sympatico High Speed Internet using
DSL promises “Up to 1 Mbps downstream; up to 160 Kbps upstream.”4 Most PCs on the
University network have a connection speed of 3.4 Mbps for downloads. This is more
than three times the speed of standard DSL and 1.7 times the standard download speed of
cable. Since we had access to a DSL account, we benchmarked a test PC using the speed
tests from BroadBandReports.com and found the results to be very similar to
Sympatico’s claim5. Not only does this verify their claim, it also validates our
performance numbers. Even the “Sympatico High Speed Ultra” specifications, below, do
not match the performance of a University Internet connection.
“Up to 3 Mbps downstream
Up to 640 Kbps upstream.”6
Moreover, unlike DSL and cable providers we do not limit our upstream access. Our
upstream performance of 4756 Kbps outperforms the published Sympatico upstream
capability for either of their service offerings. Our upstream performance also
outperforms Cogeco’s upload limit in our testing7.
Now that we have illustrated that a connection on campus is faster than cable or
DSL, we turn our attention to accessing campus servers and network services from home.
Until recently there was only one high speed method to access campus resources using
your fast connection at home. You had to come through a firewall. Now there is a Virtual
Private Network (VPN) option. As mentioned in the last issue of Insight, VPN gives a
secure connection from your home PC to campus servers. Not only is it secure, VPN also
gives you improved performance.
Average Throughput
1.40
1.16
1.20
Thoroughput (Mb/s)
1.00
0.82
0.80
0.60
0.57
0.58
DSL
Cable
DSL
Cable
Firewall
Firewall
VPN
VPN
0.40
0.20
0.00
While the PC being used for the Cable test was a bit under powered8 the above
chart shows that on average it is better to use VPN. In fact, on download we averaged a
1.87 Mb per second download on a 1.00 Mb DSL connection! VPN can achieve higher
than the theoretical maximum speed by using compression which is turned on by default.
If you want to get faster access to campus servers and network resources you will want to
consider using a VPN connection9.
We have looked at the speed of going from the campus to the Internet and the
Internet to the campus. However, sometimes things on the Internet seem to be slow. The
problem could reside in one or more of the following areas:
 your PC,
 your LAN (if you are on campus) or your ISP (if you are off campus),
 the remote site, or
 the Internet.
If you suspect that the problem is with the Internet or want to know the status of the
Internet, there are some Internet monitors that you may wish to visit:
 The Internet Health Report (http://www.internethealthreport.com/) measures
latency10 between Major U.S. carriers.
 The Internet Traffic Report (http://www.internettrafficreport.com/) measures
latency and packet loss11 between selected routers world wide.
 The Internet Average (http://average.matrixnetsystems.com/) measures latency,
packet loss, and reachability12 between thousands of servers and routers around
the world.
The role of these monitors and other Internet monitors is to give you an indication on the
status of the Internet. None of them is definitive enough to account for every site on the
Internet. Of the three sites mentioned above, the Internet Traffic Report is the simplest to
understand as it gives a single number with stoplight colour codes; the higher the index
the better the state of the Internet. The Internet Average is the most complicated because
it gives a set of three graphs (one for each latency, packet loss, and reachability). Each
system being polled is classified into one of five groups of systems and then the entire
group is plotted onto each of the three graphs. While the Internet Average is most
complicated, it is also the most comprehensive.
To summarize, an Internet connection on the main campus13 is faster than a DSL
or cable connection. When you are off campus, have a high speed connection, and want
to make intense use of a University server or network service, you should use a VPN
connection. If you want to know the status of the Internet there are Internet monitors that
can be reviewed. For more information on network performance please visit our web site
at http://www.uwindsor.ca/netperf.
1
The BroadbandReports.com site is also known DSLReports.com, www.DSLReports.com, and
www.BroadbandReports.com.
2
There are 8 bits in a byte.
3
Quote from last paragraph on http://www.cogeco.com/promotions_res.cfm?lang=EN?region=on&lang=en
4
Quote from chart on
http://www.bell.sympatico.ca/default.do?currentPath=homePath&province=ontario&language=english&br
andID=OntMass
5
Using a P4-2.4GHz PC with 512MB of memory over a Sympatico High Speed (DSL) Internet connection
the average download speed was 0.94 Mb/s and the average upload speed was 0.17 Mb/s.
6
Quote from chart on
http://www.bell.sympatico.ca/default.do?currentPath=homePath&province=ontario&language=english&br
andID=OntMass
7
Using a P2-500MHz PC with 256MB of memory over a Cogeco Standard High Speed Internet
connection, our testing gave us average upstream performance of 0.31Mb/s.
8
For the DSL test we used a P4-2.4GHz PC with 512MB of memory over a Sympatico High Speed
Internet connection. For the Cable tests we used a P2-500MHz PC with 256MB of memory over a Cogeco
Standard High Speed Internet connection.
9
To get VPN access, please contact our Helpdesk (email: Helpdesk@UWindsor.Ca or phone: 519-2533000 ext. 4440).
10
The Internet Health Report uses TCP Open time to determine latency.
11
The Internet Traffic Report uses ICMP Echo (i.e. ping) to measures latency and packet loss.
12
The Internet Average uses a series of ICMP Echo (i.e. ping) commands to measures latency, packet loss
and reachability.
13
Some connections in the 300 and 400 block of Sunset, Canterbury Residence, the public laptop network
and the wireless network have more limited connections.