Noulakaz

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

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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 :-) )”

Bandwidth survey in Mauritius

By 13 Comments

I want to do a study of the real bandwidth that we get through our ADSL connections in Mauritius. I want to show that we are getting only a subset (I would say < 40%) of what we are actually paying for. I want to do the survey over 7 days (from Monday to Sunday) on at least 5 different ADSL lines (i.e. I need 4 volunteers). I think that we can time how long we need to download a 1Mb file from the US and Europe at different times (say, around 8:30, 16:30 and 22:30) This will obviously produce 5 x 7 x 3 x 2 = 210 different bandwidths which when averaged will produce a pretty good estimate. Who wants to help? I need 4 people with MyT at 256kbit/s. It would be best to start the experiment on Monday 2 July to cater for the 1Gb limitation. As you can easily calculate, the experiment will only use 7 x 3 x 2 x 1 Mb = 42 Mb of your 1Gb quota... There is an ongoing discussion on Facebook on this.