Re: [cobalt-users] Mexican ISP + RaQ3 = Aye Caramba!

[Ariel Manzur <punto@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 07:35 13/05/2000 -0500, you wrote:
>Fathi has made an EXCELLENT point with this response:
>> Frame relay or fibre optic lines do have the same speed, regardless if
>> they're in China, Bangladesh, Cuba or in the US -- and yeah, even in
>> Somalia
>> they use Cisco routers. Don't the US companies also use Cisco routers?
>> Which technology are you refering to?

>Here's a good test:  Go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/ and (from wherever you
>are) and see how the speed/throughput is.
>Now try http://www.cnn.com/ and see how things look.
>These two sites are on different Continents.
>Both of these are BIG sites with tons of traffic.  Both are very fast.
>Geography has NOTHING to do with this; both companies have decided to
>invest in their sites to make the highly accessable.

That's not entirely true. I'm in Argentina (the south part of south
america) using a cablemodem (I think the company belongs to TCI), my IP is
24.232.33.119. If you do a traceroute to the IP, you'll see that the lag
increases in 500ms when the packet enters Argentina (anything with .ar at
the end). This is because there is (or was, until last year I think) a
monopoly in the international comunications, and the company, "Telintar"
uses a satelite or something. Sometimes I have 20-50% packet loss with
servers outside the country, and sometimes it's 100%.
Inside argentina, I can download a file at 70kb/s, outside, I'm lucky if I
get 30. I _can't_ play Quake.

So, I seriously doubt that in Somalia you can get the same speed and uptime
that you get in Iowa or UK.

(BTW, I admin 2 raq2s and 2 raq3s, all located inside US, so I have to use
telnet with 800ms of average lag, and 20% packet loss)

Bye.

Ariel.