Wednesday, June 23, 2010

World Cup Affects U.K. Latency, Packet Loss


As you would expect, the World Cup has driven up video consumption. Timico, a U.K. Internet access provider, set a new record for video usage online, with usage up 309 percent over average. So what's happened on the technical side that affects end user experience?


Higher latency and packet loss seem to be the main effects."Some users may only see a slight increase in latency or a small amount of packet loss whilst for others latency has quadrupled and packet loss is in the region of five percent," says ThinkBroadband.

In one test, the average latency has quadrupled from around 28 milliseconds to approximately 120 milliseconds at peak World Cup time and packet loss increased as well.

The hit to user experience is video occasionally breaking up or freezing from packet loss, while websites would load more slowly.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/4282-can-the-uk-broadband-network-cope.html

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