michaelmacal.com

This site is using the premium virtual server package from GoDaddy.com. It seems to be rather slow compared to a year ago, but I don’t have any metrics to back that up. I think that their virtual load-balancing currently causes severe variability in performance. Here is some data from a recent speed test. Is this good?

Load times for http://michaelmacal.com/blog from http://WebWait.com during non-peak weekend time (Sat @ 8:45pm):

Average: 8.16s. Median: 3.97s. StdDev: 4.935s. From 30 calls.
[1] 6.78s
[2] 4.85s
[3] 7.38s
[4] 3.25s
[5] 8.66s
[6] 10.76s
[7] 6.19s
[8] 11.92s
[9] 20.14s
[10] 24.95s
[11] 10.09s
[12] 7.99s
[13] 3.38s
[14] 3.24s
[15] 7.19s
[16] 13.63s
[17] 3.52s
[18] 4.18s
[19] 3.63s
[20] 4.14s
[21] 5.41s
[22] 4.93s
[23] 14.38s
[24] 4.64s
[25] 3.01s
[26] 7.10s
[27] 3.29s
[28] 4.59s
[29] 5.28s
[30] 3.04s

Strange. Testing against PHX server gives low ping, fast upload, low bandwidth. Scottsdale give high ping, okay upload, high bandwidth. What’s up with that? Tested from a MacBook + Airport Extreme N Router, + SB5120 modem. the last test is from my iPhone. Actually pretty impressive for a little device. It had a faster upload then the 2nd laptop test!

MacBook on WAN – Phoenix

MacBook on WAN – Scottsdale

MacBook on LAN – Scottsdale

iPhone on WAN – Scottsdale

MacBook 802.11N @ 58% Signal Strength

PS3 802.11G @ 70% Signal Strength

PS3 Ethernet

So what is going on here. Downloads directly from PS3 network are VERY slow. A quick check on speedtest.net shows that while the PS3 is slower than my laptop, scoring half the bandwidth, it still should be tooling around at descent internet speeds. Even still, downloads from the store, including the system updates are painfully slow other wireless.

You would assume that the Sony network is the culprit but when I put a direct Ethernet connection for the PS3, downloads suddenly pick up about an order of magnitude faster.

The router is the Apple Airport Extreme N. The connection check from the PS3 indicates correctly that UPnP is not supported and detects NAT Type 2 routing. Using DMZ port forwarding does not change the transfer speed when using the wireless connection.

Does the store do something differently? I guess only something like Wireshark will tell. Maybe I will packet sniff this weekend to see if I can find the issue. I have seen many posts complaining about wireless + store download speed issues so I know that I’m not alone. My old router would not even create a working wireless connection with the PS3 even though everything looked proper. Oh well. If you know of a possible solution drop me a line.