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Wednesday, Sep 08, 2004

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How really fast is your Internet connection?

By Anand Parthasarathy

BANGALORE, SEPT. 7. A rose by any other name smells as sweet — or so Shakespeare said.

But as Indian customers are ruefully discovering, a connection to the Internet does not become faster just because the service provider renames it "broadband" and charges more.

In fact, many of the so-called `high speed' services using the local Cable TV network or a separate Ethernet connection that are being offered in major metros in this country, are no faster — and may even be slower — than the connection through the traditional telephone-and-modem combo.

`Broadband' is defined as a technology for the simultaneous carriage of text, data, sound, pictures and video at speeds where this can happen smoothly.

Internationally, the term is not used unless the connection speed is at least ten times that of a simple dial-up connection, which is limited by modem technology and telephone line limitations to 56 kilo bits per second (KBPS). In other words, Broadband Internet means 512 KBPS or faster.

Unreliable

However, early players in India who offered `always on' Internet via TV or Ethernet cable have been mostly unable to reliably deliver such speeds.

Most of the time, subscribers who typically pay Rs. 700-1000 a month for such a connection, have been palmed off with infrastructure that delivers speeds only marginally faster than the dial-up telephone route. Granted, one does not have to pay telephone talk bills additionally, but at the end of the month the total cost of Internet access may, in fact work out to be costlier than the telephone route.

Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) technology using a fibre optic telephone cable has fared better; but again rarely at internationally accepted broadband speeds.

In June the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) released a Broadband policy document which defined broadband speed in India, somewhat modestly, as 256 KBPS or faster.

As a result, major Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have adjusted their marketing strategies. Hathway recently announced a 256 KBPS `always on' connection for Rs. 750 a month — with a cap on the amount of downloads — 500 mega bytes. Last week, VSNL announced that it would offer a Rs. 360-a-month service starting in Mumbai, and spreading to other metros, with an assured 512 KBPS.

It is very difficult to tell just by randomly surfing, how fast your connection is. The judgment is too subjective. So how can you verify the claims of ISPs? Thankfully, customers can now make an independent judgment of Internet connection speed. Two free Web resources have become available, where they send and receive a test packet of data, to and from, your connected PC — no matter what technology you use: telephone, cable or ethernet — and then provide a speed estimate.

Poor speeds

The free resources are: (1) The C/Net technology news service, www.cnet.com (Look for the "Tools and Info" blurb on the bottom left of the page and click on "Bandwidth Meter") and (2) The DSL Reports web page, www.dslreports.com/stest (There are multiple test sites; select one that is not busy).

When this correspondent performed the test today, on both services he got connection speeds of around 42 and 45 KBPS for what was supposed to be a 128 KBPS connection through Ethernet cable. These are actually download speeds from Web to your PC. The second service also metered the upload speed, from PC to Web, at around 10 KBPS.

While different tests will provide slightly different results, depending on the constantly varying Network conditions, they are unlikely to vary by more than 20 per cent. Also with many Indian "always on" connections, speeds will drop, as more users come on line. But the claimed speed should be attainable at least at a slack hour — like late at night.

Perform the test when your service provider is present — and then decide if you are indeed getting what you're paying for.

In the U.K., last month the Advertising Standards Authority rapped some service providers who claimed broadband services without providing the expected speeds. It may be time for Indian consumers to wake up to their rights too — and demand that broadband speeds live up to their name.

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