Interpreting UI/Reports, PNM Viz Overview

RTp: Throughput/Speed

Description

These show the throughput of your network service. It implies the speed of your network connection but more importantly it measures the whole network including the stuff in your house, your connection to the telephone exchange and the onward connections right through to the place in the internet to which we test.

It does not just test the bit from your home to the telephone exchange because that is only one small part of the puzzle and you don’t ever just use that bit and you certainly don’t pay your service provider for just that bit!

There are links on this page to short articles on the difference between speed and throughput as well as the typical components of a home internet service.

Remember there are two of these same visualizations: one for upload (away from your home) and one for download (towards your home) throughput – they will probably have different scales.

Real world impacts

If you are suffering from poor throughput then you may be seeing slow web page downloads or a streaming service like Netflix may pause and ‘buffer’ while watching a show. Voice calls delivered over your internet connection may also suffer from poor sound quality or ‘clipping’

This is a “slow down” issue – your network is working but just taking too long to do things.

What to look for

In this visualisation a higher number means better performance. Usually, but not always, residential services have a higher download rate than the upload rate. You should compare the download rate with the plan you have with your service provider and with their service level commitments. Often they will say things like “speeds up to 30mbps with a peak hour minimum of 25mbps”, this means that the best you can expect is the bigger number buts when everyone else in your area are also using the network it may drop to the lower number.

If you are experiencing lower speeds that they advertise then it is worth raising the issue with your service provider.

How do we test

We send a bunch of random data from your agent to a point in the network and then send a bunch back to your agent. This way we can measure the upload and download speeds separately.

What could cause poor Throughput

Firstly, your network provider could have provisioned your service incorrectly at a lower speed than the one you have purchased.

They may have provisioned it at the correct speed but have configuration errors along the way that are causing slow downs.

They may also have capacity issues that mean they simply cannot deliver the services they have sold – this can often be time of day dependent – some of the time when usage is light you will experience good performance but at peak times they don’t have the capacity to do a good job.

Good old fashioned line faults can cause these problems too.

Remember through that other things could cause this too. Examples include:

      • The computer that your agent runs on could be ancient and unable to generate enough the test traffic fast enough (this is very unlikely though!)
      • Your home network could be poorly configured or have a fault.
      • You could be on a very ‘noisy’ or ‘weak’ WiFi connection at home
      • You could be suffering from packet loss – see the linked article about the relationship between loss and throughput
      • The network between your service provider and our test destinations could be causing a problem (this too is very unlikely)

Next steps to diagnose or repair for Residential Trial Customers

First, and most importantly, decide if your issues are related to speed and throughput – don’t just troubleshoot because you see a ‘low’ number. A low number may be fine for you if you just send emails once in a while from the home in which you live alone.

Alternatively, a low number may be a big problem if you are sharing your home with a bunch of teenage kids who never get off YouTube, NetFlix and social media and your Sports TV channel is delivered to an internet-based set-top box.

Most importantly, compare the throughput numbers with the plan you have purchased from your service provider – are they ‘similar’. If they are similar then you probably need to upgrade your plan. If they are not similar then further troubleshooting will help

Do you see dips (or low numbers) in throughput at the times you experience poor performance or slowdowns at home?

Forward your TelcoSI email containing the PDF report to your service provider and ask them to take a look at why the performance you are seeing in the report is not getting close to the plan you have purchased. They can use the information on this page to understand how we test and they can also contact us for in-depth guidance on what our reports mean ‘under the covers’.

More visualization Overviews:

TelcoSIAdmin

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