The Internet
Traffic Index = average score across all routers
How is the Index calculated?
Comparing response
times:
Response times are proportional to distance
from the tester to the target, so it wouldn't be fair to say a router in
Asia is performing worse than a router in Arizona just because Arizona
is closer to the tester. So we determine what the "normal response time"
for each router is, and then report on whether its current response is
better or worse than its usual response. The "normal response time" for
each router is the "most frequent response time" from that router over
the past week ( 24 hours times previous 7 days = 168 samples )
Mode vs. Average:
Why compare it to the "most frequent"
response time instead of the average response time? Because occasionally
a ping will come back over 1500 ms later so the average response time is
often outside of the bulk region of typical responses.
Calculating a score:
The "normal response score" = 66 (out
of 100) and the current score on each router shows how far better or worse
it is compared to normal. Why is 66 out of 100 considered normal?
Why not 50? Because the scale of 0 to 100 is divided into 3
grades. Packet loss is also factored in by subtraction; any packet
loss is bad.
The big question is "So what! Does
that affect me?"
On most days, this measurement might not
have any relation to what you're experiencing because you may do most of
of your surfing on sites that don't route through these routers. However,
there will be other days when you'll try to get any web pages Wired or
ZDNet, but other web sites pop up immediately. The traffic report page
may show the Boston and Chicago routers of bbnplanet.net are not responding,
and lo' and behold, Wired and ZDNet and tons of other web sites and surfers
are connected through BBN.
It isn't possible to test all of routers
on the Internet (of which there are thousands) so we list the busier routers
connecting to the largest ISPs and web sites in each region. It's like
the Dow Jones Index which is based a representative group of blue chip
stocks, even though most investors don't own any of those stocks, it still
describes the market behavior from day to day.
Scheduled improvements to the Internet
TrafficReport:
Consolidate results of same tests from other
test locations
