Putting data capacity to test

WHEN Telstra’s Next G network opened its doors recently, the emphasis was probably tilted in favour of mobile phones and all the whizbangery available on the new High Speed Downlink Packet Access handsets that match the ultra-fast network.

For users living in rural areas and city wireless users the network’s data capacity is probably of equal importance with phone television, video calling, fast music downloads and vast network coverage.
All you need is a data card, an account and plan, and a notebook computer, and you are away at pretty good broadband speeds almost anywhere nationally.

Not to be left out, Vodafone launched its HSDPA access service last week, and it will provide phone connection and broadband net access to about 55 per cent of the population.

As well, Hutchison 3, which already reaches 56 per cent of the population with its current 3G though non-HSDPA service, will have its own HSDPA network up and running in major centres by March, with Brisbane slated to start the ball rolling in December.

In testing the various networks, it became apparent that theoretical maximums are highly unlikely in the real world.

We set out to measure network speed using three of the most reliable online testing instruments we could find.

It must be said, however, that results would vary to the point of disbelief at times, so we persisted randomly over the sites at various times, and went with the most consistent results.

Even more real-world is the speed at which routine file downloads are obtained, because these depend on variable server speeds at the source.

For a non-wireless control we used our very substantial bandwidth here at The Australian.

We then collected the entire iTunes 7 program from Apple, and some much smaller single-song files from BigPond.

There were significant anomalies.

For example, although the 34.9MB iTunes program downloaded in just 12 seconds through our fixed pipe, a BigPond song file, at about one-tenth the size, took more than twice as long to acquire.

Source- http://australianit.news.com.au