July 7, 1997
Internet speed bumps keep traffic at a crawl
By Bob O'Donnell
Looking to increase your company's connection speed to the Internet? Don't bother.
Unless all of your users connect with 33.6 Kbps or slower dial-up links, you won't see
much benefit. And even then, the boost your users will see is minimal.
That's exactly what a fascinating new study done by Keynote
Systems and BoardWatch magazine shows. The two
organizations tested the speed of Internet backbone providers and through an extensive,
month-long test period collected nearly 2 million data points that measured the
performance of Web sites over various routes on the Internet. (The testing methodology was
similar to what Keynote uses to generate the Keynote Business 40 Internet
performance index that InfoWorld prints each week.)
The result of their work is a performance ranking of Internet backbone providers (check
out http://www.keynote.com/measures/backbones/backbones.html),
which itself is a very interesting chunk of data. CompuServe's ranking as the No. 1
backbone provider even made the general press last week.
What wasn't widely reported, however, was the actual throughput rates that these tests
measured. Here's the deal: Keynote measured how long it took to transfer 10 Kbytes of Web
page data from one point on the Internet to another and then multiplied those numbers by
five to approximate the size of, and time it takes to download, an average Web page (50
Kbytes). Keynote found that the performance range among backbone providers was enormous
(the slowest took roughly 17 times longer to deliver the file than the fastest). That's
interesting, but more important is that the average time to transfer the data (multiplied
by five) was just shy of 10 seconds. That translates into an average transfer rate of 5
Kbytes or 40 kilobits/second.
And that's the real crux of the issue. The average performance of the Internet
backbone, which we're all ultimately subject to regardless which Internet backbone
provider our ISP is connected to, is abysmal. Today's 56K modems, which often connect at
around 44 or 48 Kbps, are all that you really need for web surfing. In fact, they're about
all the current Internet can really handle. Stick a fatter pipe to the 'net and all you'll
get is a lot more air. ADSL, cable modems, and other fast access technologies? Forget
about 'em, at least as far as web surfing is concerned.
I don't know about you, but I find this flabbergasting. After all the talk and effort
that's going into making faster connections for individual sites and end users, it turns
out most of it is for naught right now because the backbone is so overloaded.
The implications of this are even more astonishing. Until the entire backbone
infrastructure is strengthened at its weakest points, there's no point in spending time or
money to increase the size of your company's pipe. Applications that depend on fast 'net
access, including Microsoft's forthcoming Memphis operating system, are also going to
suffer because of the 'net's poor performance. Without speedy, ubiquitous Web access, a
desktop-environment centered around the Web just doesn't make sense.
Unfortunately, because no single organization has control over the Internet backbone,
there's no easy way to really fix the problem. But until the problem is resolved (and I
don't see any easy answers), the entire computer industry could suffer. Software vendors,
hardware suppliers, venture capitalists, and many corporations have attached their
fortunes and future growth to the Web, and without a speedy, robust Internet, we'll all be
left holding, a very large, very empty bag. Frankly, that's a pretty scary thought.
©
Copyright 1997, by InfoWorld Publishing Corp., a
subsidiary of IDG Communications, Inc. Reprinted from InfoWorld,
155 Bovet Road, San Mateo, CA 94402. Further reproduction is prohibited.
