[SunRescue] re: [OT] Reliable net access in the boonies

[Greg A. Woods]

[ On Wednesday, March 28, 2001 at 23:03:13 (-0500), Joshua D. Boyd wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: [SunRescue] re: [OT] Reliable net access in the boonies
>
> Personally, I'd generally rather less speed in exchange for less latency.
> But I guess you gotta take what you can get.

Less latency is almost always best unless your only use of the the Net
is to download massive quantities of stuff.  If you do any amount of
interactive work at all, especially with something like SSH (which makes
modem compression protocols look simple, from a latency P.O.V.), then
you absolutely need the lowest latency you can afford.

Of course packet loss is always something to avoid like the plague too,
especially with protocols like SSH.

I "suffered" with a 28.8kbps modem link and a 128k ISDN link between me
and the Net for a few years.  It was not bad for typing (average of
about 120ms RTT to local sites) and OK for small downloads, just not for
doing both at the same time.  :-)

Then I got a cable modem to replace the 28.8 and even through a GIF
tunnel that cut the RTT down to 1/4 of what it was.  Unfortuantely the
packet loss went *WAY* up (avg. 7%).  Overall the link was far less
usable (only the WWW and FTP went faster because I avoided most of the
loss by using the Rogers at Home WWW proxy).

I've now mostly switched over to a 3.0Mbit aDSL line (i.e. with my own
private ATM PVC), with about 4-10ms RTT between here and my provider
(depending on how busy Bell Canada's ATM cloud is, I guess), and almost
no measurable packet loss, so now I finally have the best of both
worlds -- high speed and low latency!

-- 
							Greg A. Woods

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