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Originally Posted by Lauira
LOL....okay, download is not really what we are concerned with here... we test at over 4MB with our cable. It is really the other stuff that matters... Download is fun to measure though. 
I will be back with a post about what REALLY affects how fast you are at Hyena Cart...and maybe Holli will speak up too. |
Okay, maybe nobody cares about this...but here goes... (Holli - feel free to correct me if I have something wrong!)
When you are surfing the internet, many, many factors come into play when talking about how "fast" you are. Some things you have control over and some you don't.
Obviously, your download speed is one of those things. That can be tested at
www.bandwidth.com. It seems many of us have great download speeds! When a company is an ISP (Internet Service Provider), they buy a certain amount of "space" and then resell it to you - giving you your download speed and upload speed. Everybody shares this space - the more people using it, the slower your connection will be. It will test differently at different times of the day.
BUT, in order to actually USE your download speed you MUST have a good upload speed. I know that makes no sense, but everytime you download it is like a conversation - you have to send "packets" of info back. I won't go into detail about how much exactly it needs (I can if anyone wants to know :LOL ), but let's just say that pretty much any cable connection doesn't let you use your full download speed because your upload speed is pretty slow. See, this is why we are getting T1s - we get the FULL 3MB download speed because of the 3MB upload (this is not a shared connection like a cable connection). You can test your upload at
http://www.bandwidth.com/tools/speedTest (it is one of the numbers it gives you). So it is really misleading to only go by download since most of us (including me) in our current situation can't utilize it all.
But there are other things too! The most obvious one is geography. Where YOU are located versus where the server you are trying to hit is located will also affect speed. Logically, the closer you are, the shorter the distance you travel, the faster you will be! In the case of Hyena Cart, the server we are pinging is physically located in Germany. Any Germans stalking? :LOL
There is even more too... Whenever you you refresh the Hyena Cart page, you are making a request of the server located in Germany. You are sending info across your internet lines that eventually reaches this location asking it to give you the new information for that page so it can load again on your screen. But along the way, parts of this information can be lost - this is packet loss. If info is lost, your entire request can fail and you have to start over. This could be the difference between getting the KSS or losing it.
You want to see less than 5% of your packets being lost - more than that and you will be at a disadvantage. You can actually test this yourself. If you are using Windows, click Start, Run, and type in cmd. When the black screen comes up, type ping
www.hyenacart.com. It will send some small packets of info to the Hyena Cart server and tell you if any is lost. It will even tell you how many miliseconds it takes to send that info and get it back. Pretty cool.
Okay...there is more... When you refresh that page to get that beloved email window, your request doesn't jump straight to the server in Germany. Depending on your connection, you may have to go through a LOT of different routers (stoplights, if that makes sense) before you ever get to Germany. You can see these too.
In that black box that came up before, type tracert
www.hyenacart.com. It will tell you exactly where your info goes before it gets to Karen's server. Mine has 19 friggin' hops. :LOL But then again, we will all have more hops because the server is outside of the US. Goingg back to our getting T1s - these will be direct to the main backbone (whereas with home cable you go through more routers before you get to the backbone) so we will have some fewer hops (hopefully). Also, along the way you are limited by the harware you are being sent through.
And certainly, your computer is going to affect your speed. The lastest hardware and software will help - and how much junk is on your computer will definitely matter.
Oh, and not to mention that the more people trying to do the same thing you are, the slower you will be - but everyone is affected by that.
Okay...I think that is most of it. Of course, it can get more complicated than this (and please - if I got anything wrong correct me!). I think Holli may be better to explain this stuff...
All of these things affect who scores what - all this wrapped up with a little bit of LUCK!! If anybody wants to run these little tests, you can post your info and we can compare.
Wouldn't that be good, clean, geeky fun?
(OMG this is long...sorry!)
because I'm the one who turned that mama on to OV and asked her to make diapers with organic short velour inners and short velour topped soakers!
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