Measuring & optimizing broadband speed

I am looking for accurate methods of measuring broadband speed,
particularly for a 728 kbps / 128 kbps DSL line. I want to see how
close my real world throughput gets to the
advertised bandwidth. Also what is the theoretical maximum and minimum
ping (average return time) and lag (standard deviation of the ping)
for such a DSL line? Is there any sort of MTU, routing table or TCP/IP
stack changes I can make (if so please explain how) to increase my
latency, lag and packet loss? I use Debian lenny with a 2.6.18 kernel.

Oh yes I will have a static IP address.

Also I got some advice on how to setup my ADSL line I'm getting next
week but no one mentioned using the "route" command and setting up the
routing table (gateway, metrics, netmask). Is that not necessary in my
case?

Zach

On Tue, 12 Feb 2008 02:33:40 -0800, Zach wrote:

> I am looking for accurate methods of measuring broadband speed,
> particularly for a 728 kbps / 128 kbps DSL line. I want to see how close
> my real world throughput gets to the advertised bandwidth. Also what is
> the theoretical maximum and minimum ping (average return time) and lag
> (standard deviation of the ping) for such a DSL line? Is there any sort
> of MTU, routing table or TCP/IP stack changes I can make (if so please
> explain how) to increase my latency, lag and packet loss? I use Debian
> lenny with a 2.6.18 kernel.
>
> Oh yes I will have a static IP address.
>
> Also I got some advice on how to setup my ADSL line I'm getting next
> week but no one mentioned using the "route" command and setting up the
> routing table (gateway, metrics, netmask). Is that not necessary in my
> case?
>
> Zach

There are several web sites you can connect to in order to measure
broadband throughput. Several, I know, require java VM to be installed.

Zach <(E-Mail Removed)> writes:

>I am looking for accurate methods of measuring broadband speed,
>particularly for a 728 kbps / 128 kbps DSL line. I want to see how
>close my real world throughput gets to the

This is a repeat. You should read the replies you got first time.

ftp or rsync (with --progress) a large file into and out of your computer
and see how long it takes.


>advertised bandwidth. Also what is the theoretical maximum and minimum
>ping (average return time) and lag (standard deviation of the ping)

The theoretical maximum is infinite, and mimimum is 0.

>for such a DSL line? Is there any sort of MTU, routing table or TCP/IP
>stack changes I can make (if so please explain how) to increase my
>latency, lag and packet loss? I use Debian lenny with a 2.6.18 kernel.

And you want to increase them why?


>Oh yes I will have a static IP address.

How do you get a static IP. DO you enter it or do youget it from dhcp. If
dhcp, then the dhcp client will set your route, your /etc/resolv.conf. If
you have to enter it by hand, then you have to do those things.
Or you use Debian's set up files to do it (I do not know Debian, just
REdhat/Mandriva /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-* files)



>Also I got some advice on how to setup my ADSL line I'm getting next
>week but no one mentioned using the "route" command and setting up the
>routing table (gateway, metrics, netmask). Is that not necessary in my
>case?

>Zach