Noulakaz

The blog of Avinash, Christina, Anya and Kyan Meetoo.

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Bandwidth survey – First impressions

By 13 Comments

David Channe Vy has sent me his results for today (what about the others?) and together with mine, I can make the following preliminary observations:

  1. I’m getting 72% of what I am paying for on my MyT 256
  2. David is getting 39% of what he is paying for on his ADSL 512

Note: I’ve decided to ignore the results for the 1k and 10k files both from the US and Europe. They are too small and the latency and connection time is big relative to the transfer time and therefore bandwidth calculation cannot be made.

As from now, only do 4 tests at a go (100k from the US and Europe and 1000k from the US and Europe). Do this 3 times per day (at around 8:30, 16:30 and 22:30). Thanks.

Second day update

  1. I’m getting 68% of what I am paying for on my MyT 256
  2. David is getting 29% of what he is paying for on his ADSL 512

I pity David who got an average of only 150kbit/s today from his 512kbit/s ADSL connection…

Third day update

My internet connection is as slow as molasses tonight. I’ve collated all the data and things are looking interesting. Simply said, we are getting much less than what we are paying for. I’ll give you hard figures tomorrow.

Bandwidth survey in Mauritius – Initialization

By 7 Comments

Thanks for your help for the bandwidth survey. Here are the URLs of files found in USA and in Europe:

1kb USA = https://www.noulakaz.net/avinash/resources/bandwidth/1k
1kb Europe = http://avinashmeetoo.ifrance.com/1k

10kb USA = https://www.noulakaz.net/avinash/resources/bandwidth/10k
10kb Europe = http://avinashmeetoo.ifrance.com/10k

100kb USA = https://www.noulakaz.net/avinash/resources/bandwidth/100k
100kb Europe = http://avinashmeetoo.ifrance.com/100k

1000kb USA = https://www.noulakaz.net/avinash/resources/bandwidth/1000k
1000kb Europe = http://avinashmeetoo.ifrance.com/1000k

I would like you to time the download of each in the morning (around 8:30), in the afternoon (around 16:30) and during the night (around 22:30). This will give 3 x 8 = 24 times every day. Please note that the times are only indicative. You are free to start a big earlier or later. I don’t think this will have a big impact on the results. As I mentioned, it would be great to do this from Monday 2 July to Sunday 8 July.

(Personally I intend to use “time wget URL” to time the download as this gives millisecond accuracy which is useful for the small files i.e. 1k and 10k. Windows users should use something equivalent, a download manager perhaps?)

Please send me the results as soon as you get the 22:30 results as I would like to start analyzing them as from day one. Don’t forget to tell me what kind of Internet connection you have…

Here is a small shell script to automate the downloads:

#!/bin/sh

time wget https://www.noulakaz.net/avinash/resources/bandwidth/1k
time wget http://avinashmeetoo.ifrance.com/1k

time wget https://www.noulakaz.net/avinash/resources/bandwidth/10k
time wget http://avinashmeetoo.ifrance.com/10k

time wget https://www.noulakaz.net/avinash/resources/bandwidth/100k
time wget http://avinashmeetoo.ifrance.com/100k

time wget https://www.noulakaz.net/avinash/resources/bandwidth/1000k
time wget http://avinashmeetoo.ifrance.com/1000k

I know it’s a lot of work. Thanks a lot for your help. The more people we get participating in this survey, the better the results will be!

1984 once more: the iPhone is revolutionary

By 35 Comments

Steve Jobs has done it again. He “invented” THE computer and THE MP3 player and now he has created THE mobile phone (people tried before him, and they kind of succeeded, but not like Apple…)

Once more, Steve Jobs and his team of supermen have created something that is (i) beautiful, (ii) powerful, (iii) innovative and (iv) will sell indecently well!

Reviewers are raving about the iPhone.

Yesteday, I watched the official iPhone guided tour together with my colleague Pascal Grosset (who is a graphics guy) and we were astounded. When I showed the tour to my parents and Christina, they were all fascinated (even though my father did not really understand the necessity to have (i) music, (ii) photos, (iii) videos, (iv) a browser, and (v) email in a phone – I kept telling him that this was no ordinary mobile phone but a new kind of device)

I can only conclude: “Well done once more Apple!”

And: “I want one (but I know that this will take some time but I am patient. I waited years to buy my MacBook :-) )”