How Good is my Connection? Understanding Quality of Service on the Internet

摘要

The quality of service that end-users experience over the internet will become increasingly important as access to the internet improves in most areas. New and existing users, ISPs and regulators will all be interested in the quality of the service they are receiving, delivering or regulating on the internet. Among the questions these the stakeholders will want to investigate are: What are the right measures for quality of service? Are user's connections to the internet as fast as their plans suggest and comparable with others subscribing to the same plan? Are customers located in urban or rural areas likely to experience superior quality of service? Are customers using particular technology -ADSL, Cable, Dial-up, Satellite or ISDN - likely to be disadvantaged? Which ISPs provide the best service relative to the customer's place? Which ISPs offer the worst service? Do Domain Name Server (DNS) lookup times, latency and jitter vary between ISPs? Does time of day affect quality of service and is QoS improving or diminishing over time? Are customers likely to better or worse off depending on which country they are located in within the Asia-Pacific region? These are some of the issues that can be resolved by PC resident software that can be downloaded readily from trusted websites directly onto user's personal computers. The Line Speed Meter (LSM) is a well developed example of quality of service software that allows us to understand better the brave new world of internet connectivity.