Re: [seul-edu] Re: slow networking

[Michael Viron <mviron@wsdo.sao.uwf.edu>]

>give me new ones!). They said the backbone is running about 360mhz and the
>school network at 100mhz, and that's all they can do. 
note that it should be 360 Mbps (probably fiber), and 100 Mbps at the
school network level (network connectivity is not measured in mhz, as far
as I'm aware)
Does anybody know a
>way I can test and/or optimize the speed of connection?
There are some commands (such as route(?) which will tell you how many hops
you might have before you connect to a site, and possibly ping, which will
give you a general idea as to what the round-trip-time of your connection is.
>    Software: Netscape on Redhat 6.2. Hardware: tried on both a Pentium 133
>and a 486-66, each with 10mhz SMC-Ultra NIC. 32meg RAM on the Pentium, 40meg
>on the 486. (Both maxed out with 8meg SIMMS - any 16meg donations gratefully
>accepted!)
Part of it is that with 10mbps network cards, you have that much *less*
bandwidth to use, even if you are on a 100mbps network, part of it also
depends on how much network traffic your internet connection gets--if its
anything like the University of West Florida, which shares a dual t1
between its two campuses, and 3 surrounding counties, you are not likely to
get much better than 7 or 8 K a second, especially during whatever times
are peak usage.
(As an aside, I generally only get 7 or 8 K a second (especially during the
day), even though the computer I use does have a 100Mbps card (3c905c), the
building I'm in is wired for fast ethernet (100Mbps), and the campus has a
fiber-optic backbone.)

Mike