Assignment 1
Internet Speed Study Report
2011 Ci Summer School
J.wu R.Li J.Yu Z.Yi
Assignment 1: Internet Speed Study Report
By
WuJiao YuJie YiZhengyu LiRan
The places selected are dormitories on campus or the residences of the
study team members off campus. Study team members have easy accesses to
internet at the places is the chief reason of the selection. And the same type
of location (i.e. dormitory) can provide better comparison pairs of data.
The data collected are shown in the following table.
Table 1 The Internet Speed Test Result
Test Time
Name
of
Location
2011/7/5
23:31
2011/7/5
23:34
2011/7/5
23:41
2011/7/5
23:45
2011/7/6
23:37
Dormitory
PKU
Dormitory
PKU
Dormitory
PKU
Dormitory
PKU
Dormitory
PKU
2011/7/7
0:13
Dormitory
PKU
2011/7/8
23:45
2011/7/9
8:44
2011/7/9
8:40
2011/7/7
22:59
2011/7/7
23:01
2011/7/8
7:32
2011/7/8
7:35
Dormitory
PKU
Dormitory
PKU
Dormitory
PKU
Dormitory
Xiyuan
Dormitory
Xiyuan
Dormitory
Xiyuan
Dormitory
Xiyuan
Address of
Type of
Type of
Wireless
Upload
Download
Units of
Location
Location
Device
or Wired
Speed
Speed
Measurement
of BLDG48 Room
2103 PKU
of Building48
Room 2104 PKU
of Building48
Room 2107 PKU
of BLDG48 Room
2108 PKU
of Building 41
Room 142
Changchun
of xinyuan
Building 4
Room 227
of Building 41
Room 142
of Building 41
Room 142
of Building 41
Room 142
of nearby the
Summer Palace
of nearby the
Summer Palace
of nearby the
Summer Palace
of nearby the
Summer Palace
Dormitory Laptop
Wired
0.08
0.22
Mbps
Dormitory Laptop
Wired
6.99
6.15
Mbps
Dormitory Laptop
Wireless
0.88
0.6
Mbps
Dormitory Laptop
Wireless
0.08
0.18
Mbps
Dormitory Laptop
Wired
0.13
0.19
Mbps
Dormitory Laptop
Wired
0.13
0.44
Mbps
Dormitory Laptop
Wired
6.98
8.52
Mbps
Dormitory Laptop
Wired
20.3
40.99
Mbps
Dormitory Laptop
Wired
0.54
2.2
Mbps
community Laptop
Wireless
0.45
0.17
Mbps
community Laptop
Wireless
0.48
Mbps
community Laptop
Wireless
0.51
Mbps
community Laptop
Wireless
0.89
Mbps
1/3
2.
17
0
.6
0.95
Assignment 1
Internet Speed Study Report
Test Time
2011/7/5
15:27
Name
of
Location
2011 Ci Summer School
J.wu R.Li J.Yu Z.Yi
Address of
Type of
Type of
Wireless
Upload
Download
Units of
Location
Location
Device
or Wired
Speed
Speed
Measurement
Dormitory of No.3 building
Zhongguanc of
un
Zhongguanyuan
community laptop
wired
3.82
2.01
Obviously, some patterns exist. The download or upload action, the
location on or out of campus, the time tested have impact on the internet
speed.
(1) Generally in the same location, e.g. in dormitories of Peking
University, both upload speed and download speed with wired connection
mode were faster than those with wireless connection mode in the study.
(2) Sometimes, Internet speed of dormitories inside PKU was faster
than those outside PKU. In the study, when both using the website
http://speedtest.net and wireless connection mode, both upload and
download speed of the dormitory inside PKU was faster than the dormitory
nearby PKU, e.g. the upload speed of Building48 Room 2107 in PKU was
0.88Mbps and download speed was 0.6Mbps with wireless connection mode.
By contrast, the upload speed of Xiyuan dormitory outside PKU was
0.45Mbps and download speed was 0.17Mbps with the same connection
mode.
(3) At different times of day, Internet speeds of the same dormitory
inside PKU, i.e. Building 41 Room 142 in our study, were significantly
different. Testing with the same website at different time, both upload speed
and download speed in the morning were faster than those in midnight. So
we infer that Internet speed is influenced by using time. In the morning,
there are few students surfing the Internet, so the speed is a little faster, on
the contrary, there are many students surfing the Internet in the midnight, so
the speed is a little lower.
The significances of these findings are listed below.
First, the study informs us that there isn’t a fixed relationship between
upload and download speed. Which speed is faster depends on the condition
of network connect, location, time, and so on.
Second, it tells us that there are digital divide everywhere in our life. As
is found in our study, Internet speed is different between the university
inside and outside, even between different places of the same university.
Third, it is known to us that educational Internet resource is pretty good
and plentiful. But it doesn’t definitely mean that educational Internet speed
is faster than other types of location. How to balance the amount of
educational Internet resource and Internet speed to make best use of the rich
resource is significant.
Some findings seem normal, some are surprising.
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Mbps
Assignment 1
Internet Speed Study Report
2011 Ci Summer School
J.wu R.Li J.Yu Z.Yi
The first surprise came from the first test that the upload speed is faster
than the download speed. This phenomenon is so queer that all of us thought
there must be something wrong when testing because the maximum
theoretical download bandwidth is larger than the upload one in most
current computer networks. But the follow tests gave us similar results, we
had to accept that.
The second surprise lies in the phenomenon that different dormitories
at PKU have quite different Internet access speeds. It's not hard to explain it,
but we still want to remind the university to make an effort to balance the
network load among different dormitories so that we can get full use of the
bandwidth and experience a faster Internet access speed.
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