Setting
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expectations for
Given that we have measurements from SLAC to most countries in the world, we can translate them to indicate what connectivity is likely toto to most countries in he world for various types of applications such as email, web, VoIP, holding Skype meetings, data transfer rates etc. this may be useful for :is very valuable for
workforce globalization
- travellers to meetings
- longer term visitors etc
- collaborators
- As SLAC has diversified from an HEP site there are an increased number of scientists interested on in collaborating with SLAC. This is particularly so for developing regions such as Africa, South Asia, the Middle East, Latin America etc. PingER with its emphasis on the Digital Divide is well positioned to provide relevant performance information
- In addition there are scientific centers of interest to SLAC in developing regions. These include the future Square Kilometer Array in Africa and Australia, telescopes in Chile, the SESAME synchrotron Lab in Jordan etc.
- collaboration examplescollaborations eacmples
- Several High Energy Physics (HEP) experiments have introduced the concept of regional computer centers. Typically there a few of these (e.g. BaBar regional computer centers in France, Italy and the U.K. as well as the main center at SLAC). These centers are expected to perform much of the computing required by the collaboration and so need good connectivity to the experiment in order to get a copy of the data and to be able to share the results. By using PingER to measure the loss and RTT, we are able to provide expectations for the performance for bulk data transfer and other applications.
- When putting together the Particle Physic Data Grid (PPDG) proposal (a collaboration of 3 universities and 6 Labs), it was very valuable to be able to look at the PingER data and evaluate what the performance between the sites would be like with the existing production links. As a result of this we put together a web site for the PPDG collaboration focussed on the PingER results for the collaborators.
workforce remote workers
Choosing an ISP for home connectivity, e.g. for telecommuniting etc.:
In 1996, SLAC wanted to recommend a ISDN Internet Service provider (ISP) for people wishing to connect to SLAC from their homes in the San Francisco Bay Area. To evaluate the connectivity that the various ISPs could provide we decided to use PingER to monitor the ISP gateways in areas where we had several potential SLAC users. The results enabled us to select an ISP who had low loss and good RTT. We continued the monitring after selecting the ISP and used it to request improvements to and identify problems with the ISP. We also used the information to recommend a second ISP and remove our recommendation on the first ISP. Finally due to inconsistent performance we removed all recommendations for ISPs and provided our own ISDN service.
In 1999, SLAC wanted to recommend a DSL ISP for people wishing to connect to SLAC from their home. There were 2 major contenders, one of which was about twice the price of the other. We needed to compare the performances of the 2 ISPs, so we set PingER to monitor nodes on both networks from SLAC. We discovered that the TCP thruput of the more expensive ISP was an order of magnitude better. This was very valuable information that we were able to provide to prospective users to help in making a decision.
Identifying sites to upgrade
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From a detailed Case Study on NIIT Pakistan we were able to identify that the problem with connectivity to universities in Pakistan was not due to the performance of the Pakistani National Research and Education Network (NREN) supplied by PERN but rather due to the poor last mile connections to the university sites. These were dramatically congested. This was reported to the head of the Higher Education Commission (HEC) Atta ur Rahman and led to upgrading of the links to universities.
Choosing an ISP for home connectivity
In 1996, SLAC wanted to recommend a ISDN Internet Service provider (ISP) for people wishing to connect to SLAC from their homes in the San Francisco Bay Area. To evaluate the connectivity that the various ISPs could provide we decided to use PingER to monitor the ISP gateways in areas where we had several potential SLAC users. The results enabled us to select an ISP who had low loss and good RTT. We continued the monitring after selecting the ISP and used it to request improvements to and identify problems with the ISP. We also used the information to recommend a second ISP and remove our recommendation on the first ISP. Finally due to inconsistent performance we removed all recommendations for ISPs and provided our own ISDN service.
In 1999, SLAC wanted to recommend a DSL ISP for people wishing to connect to SLAC from their home. There were 2 major contenders, one of which was about twice the price of the other. We needed to compare the performances of the 2 ISPs, so we set PingER to monitor nodes on both networks from SLAC. We discovered that the TCP thruput of the more expensive ISP was an order of magnitude better. This was very valuable information that we were able to provide to prospective users to help in making a decision.
Deciding where to site a software development effort
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Setting expectations for VoIP
Several years ago, various national Labs (CERN in Geneva, DESY in Hamburg, FNAL in Chicago IL, LBNL in Berkeley CA, and SLAC in Menlo Park CA) have set up a pilot Voice over IP (VoIP) project to evaluate the utility and performance of this technology. By comparing the results from PingER with various ITU recommendations for loss, RTT and jitter, together with the perceptions of voice quality from the pilot, we are able to determine how well VoIP might work between various pairs of sites.
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The earthquake and tsunamis in Japan cause caused cable cuts which (see Japanese Earthquake March 11th, 2011) which resulted in interruptions in connectivity and increased round trip times caused by re-routing of traffic to avoid fibre optica cables severed off the West costs of Japan
Earthquakes
Earthquakes in Chile (see Chilean Earthquake Feb 27th, 2010 ) caused loss of connectivity, increased jitter and round-trip times.
Social Upheaval
For example for the Arab Spring (see The Arab Spring 2011 and Internet Instability seen by PingER, Egypt shuts down their Internet) the main impact was loss of connectivity die to government shut-downs of Internet access.
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With measurements going back to 1997, PingER data provides a very valuable history of Internet performance.
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