working from home...

[Ricketty C]

On Wednesday, July 29, 2020 at 12:50:41 PM UTC-4, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Wed, 29 Jul 2020 09:33:09 -0700, Joerg <news@analogconsultants.com
wrote:


It can be faster but the net benefit is usually negative when
considering the massive amount of time spent commuting.

Physical presence makes a big difference. Some decisions are really
inportant.

Of course decisions are important, but that\'s not the same thing at all as physical presence being important. With teleconferencing software, meetings can be held that are \"virtually\" the same as in person meetings (pun intended).

I\'m working on a project where the contributors are in at least four different countries. Our meetings are every bit as effective as face to face meetings if not moreso. In these video meetings people actually take care not to step on one another\'s speech.

--

Rick C.

-+ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
-+ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Joerg]

On 2020-07-29 10:27, Ricketty C wrote:

On Wednesday, July 29, 2020 at 12:50:41 PM UTC-4,
jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 29 Jul 2020 09:33:09 -0700, Joerg
news@analogconsultants.com> wrote:


It can be faster but the net benefit is usually negative when
considering the massive amount of time spent commuting.

Physical presence makes a big difference. Some decisions are
really inportant.

Of course decisions are important, but that\'s not the same thing at
all as physical presence being important. With teleconferencing
software, meetings can be held that are \"virtually\" the same as in
person meetings (pun intended).

I\'m working on a project where the contributors are in at least four
different countries. Our meetings are every bit as effective as face
to face meetings if not moreso. In these video meetings people
actually take care not to step on one another\'s speech.

That can be tough online. I found that when 10 time zones away the
latency can be hard to overcome. Depends a bit on country and
infrastructure on the other side(s). I have a 75Mbps link but some
don\'t. You almost have to say \"Over\" at the end of your transmission.
However, I found it all works well in the end.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

 

[Ricketty C]

On Wednesday, July 29, 2020 at 1:35:46 PM UTC-4, Joerg wrote:

On 2020-07-29 10:27, Ricketty C wrote:
On Wednesday, July 29, 2020 at 12:50:41 PM UTC-4,
jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 29 Jul 2020 09:33:09 -0700, Joerg
news@analogconsultants.com> wrote:


It can be faster but the net benefit is usually negative when
considering the massive amount of time spent commuting.

Physical presence makes a big difference. Some decisions are
really inportant.

Of course decisions are important, but that\'s not the same thing at
all as physical presence being important. With teleconferencing
software, meetings can be held that are \"virtually\" the same as in
person meetings (pun intended).

I\'m working on a project where the contributors are in at least four
different countries. Our meetings are every bit as effective as face
to face meetings if not moreso. In these video meetings people
actually take care not to step on one another\'s speech.


That can be tough online. I found that when 10 time zones away the
latency can be hard to overcome. Depends a bit on country and
infrastructure on the other side(s). I have a 75Mbps link but some
don\'t. You almost have to say \"Over\" at the end of your transmission.
However, I found it all works well in the end.

We have that sort of scattering with people in California and in eastern Europe. No latency issues... I mean really? Latency is only an issue when you have a local problem these days. We do on occasion have bandwidth issues which are also local problems. I don\'t turn on my video because of my Internet connection being poor in both latency and bandwidth.

The goofy thing is the bandwidth issues show up first in the audio rather than letting the video degrade. Without audio the whole thing is pointless. We tried one of the other services because of the 40 minute meeting limitation on Zoom for free accounts and found the other service was very blurry when the camera moved. Zoom was much more clear. Maybe the other service was preserving bandwidth, lol.

--

Rick C.

+- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
+- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Joerg]

On 2020-07-29 11:08, Ricketty C wrote:

On Wednesday, July 29, 2020 at 1:35:46 PM UTC-4, Joerg wrote:
On 2020-07-29 10:27, Ricketty C wrote:
On Wednesday, July 29, 2020 at 12:50:41 PM UTC-4,
jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 29 Jul 2020 09:33:09 -0700, Joerg
news@analogconsultants.com> wrote:


It can be faster but the net benefit is usually negative
when considering the massive amount of time spent commuting.

Physical presence makes a big difference. Some decisions are
really inportant.

Of course decisions are important, but that\'s not the same thing
at all as physical presence being important. With
teleconferencing software, meetings can be held that are
\"virtually\" the same as in person meetings (pun intended).

I\'m working on a project where the contributors are in at least
four different countries. Our meetings are every bit as
effective as face to face meetings if not moreso. In these video
meetings people actually take care not to step on one another\'s
speech.


That can be tough online. I found that when 10 time zones away the
latency can be hard to overcome. Depends a bit on country and
infrastructure on the other side(s). I have a 75Mbps link but some
don\'t. You almost have to say \"Over\" at the end of your
transmission. However, I found it all works well in the end.

We have that sort of scattering with people in California and in
eastern Europe. No latency issues... I mean really? Latency is only
an issue when you have a local problem these days.

It\'s a long distance issue. The packets get routed via all sorts of
infrastructure along the way. Do a ping to a European web site and
mostly you find something north of 150msec. Add to that latencies in the
computers themselves and it becomes easy for people to fall into someone
else speaking.

I notice that problem only when overseas parties are participating,
hardly ever with anyone is on the US West Coast.

For example, I just pinged my old health care provideer in Europe for a
test, 171-175msec. It is a very large company with good IT
infrastructure. Pinging Intel in California results in 12-17msec.

... We do on occasion
have bandwidth issues which are also local problems. I don\'t turn on
my video because of my Internet connection being poor in both latency
and bandwidth.

See? That\'s what I mean. IME the audio latency does not improve when
turning off the video. That we only do when the bandwidth on the other
side is too skimpy.

The goofy thing is the bandwidth issues show up first in the audio
rather than letting the video degrade. Without audio the whole thing
is pointless. We tried one of the other services because of the 40
minute meeting limitation on Zoom for free accounts and found the
other service was very blurry when the camera moved. Zoom was much
more clear. Maybe the other service was preserving bandwidth, lol.

That is one of my pet peeve. So far Zoom is one of the few services
where their engineers understand that audio is #1, always. Us guys in
the Signal Corps 40-some years ago already knew that back then.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

 

[Don Y]

On 7/29/2020 9:50 AM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

It can be faster but the net benefit is usually negative when
considering the massive amount of time spent commuting.

Physical presence makes a big difference. Some decisions are really
inportant.

IME, having in-person meetings leads to a lot more \"premature\"
(and bad!) decisions than IMPLICITLY having the time to think
things through.

The best decision I made in my business was to eschew the telephone.
Forcing people to put their thoughts in writing makes them think
a bit harder about what they want. There\'s less \"flippant\"
thinking because you have a chance to think about what you\'re
suggesting or requesting BEFORE uttering it.

It also is inherently self-documenting: \"THIS is what you said...\"
Spoken conversations tend to leave folks with their own impressions
of what was said, agreed, etc. Journaling lets you look back upthread
to justify your current position/claim.

(unfortunately, it forces folks to be more careful in choice of
terms, etc.)

 

[Joerg]

On 2020-07-28 06:26, Martin Brown wrote:

On 27/07/2020 20:34, edward.ming.lee@gmail.com wrote:
On Monday, July 27, 2020 at 12:26:14 PM UTC-7, John Larkin wrote:
On Mon, 27 Jul 2020 15:06:03 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-07-27 14:55, John Larkin wrote:


https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2020/07/27/report-googles-200000-employees-will-work-from-home-for-another-full-year/


This virus thing might change things, and specifically cities,
forever.

Are many of you working from home now?

Been back in the lab for a month. (It has way better A/C than
home.) \'s

It\'s 50C to 60C here. The computers provide better heating than home.

Never known it that hot in any of our offices although one site I used
to visit kept their programmers in an attic where the summer temperature
sometimes hit 45C which made life unbearable for them.

35-40C is near noamrl in my office in summer. Especially when doing
length SPICE simulations.

Didn\'t do the computers much good either.

This year I had only two BSOD events. So far.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

 

[Joerg]

On 2020-07-27 20:58, Gerhard Hoffmann wrote:

Am 27.07.20 um 23:11 schrieb Klaus Kragelund:
In Denmark we shut down completely 11th of March, and in my company we
went back to work fully mid June, with some people starting mid May

We have the situation under control (so far) since people respected
the guidelines and the pullback was strong

We have had about 2000 cases per million people, 6 times lower than
the US. I hope it will be under control soon in the US

We in .de had as much cases in total as the US as the US has in 3 days
currently. Yes, we are only 25% of the US people. But the US is only
25% of China\'s people. _They_ have stopped their epidemic.
If you think you can stop their quest for influence & wealth, you\'re silly.

If violent protesting without masks, with lots of screaming and next to
nothing in physical distancing is considered a \"basic right\" while a
church service with masks, proper distancing and temperature checks of
every attendee is not, what did you expect?

Case in point: We are holding church services since more than a month.
COVID positives in our congregation of more than 300: Zero.

This almost goes for our whole county (El Dorado County, no protests
here). 579 cases in about 200000 residents. And those cases concentrate
on two quite confined areas where wealthier Silicon Valley residents
have a 2nd, 3rd, 4th or whatever home. Even that is trickling down:

http://eldoradocounty.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/b5315baf88c34be996a16c6f0b8fdcfb

Also, Americans are less receptive when it comes to being told how they
should live. That is generally an asset but not right now.

I did work from my own lab, so no real loss of work efficiency. Just
ordered parts to my home address

Same here.

I actually have the impression that the Corona shut down helps.
Outsourcing development is somehow against the local culture.

In Europe I always had the impression that using external engineers was
not very desirable and I moved away. THEN I got European clients.

Production in China, yes, but...

Jörg, if you have excessive customers due to retirement,
bounce them to me..

Gladly. Though for now they are ok even though I told them that I only
handle tough stuff but no more large designs from scratch to production.
Most already had external SW teams and they asked them to bone up on HW,
hire engineers et cetera. Occasionally I help them find one,
interviewing and such. They throw the nasty stuff over my fence which is
ok (for now). Works well. For when there is a project where they do not
have such a team and the client is willing to go overseas I definitely
have you on my short-list.

For US companies overseas is typically not a problem. One team that is
now SW/HW I work with is in Lithuania, which to my surprise has its very
own language. I am very grateful for online translators.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

 

[Ricketty C]

On Wednesday, July 29, 2020 at 2:29:19 PM UTC-4, Joerg wrote:

On 2020-07-29 11:08, Ricketty C wrote:
On Wednesday, July 29, 2020 at 1:35:46 PM UTC-4, Joerg wrote:
On 2020-07-29 10:27, Ricketty C wrote:
On Wednesday, July 29, 2020 at 12:50:41 PM UTC-4,
jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 29 Jul 2020 09:33:09 -0700, Joerg
news@analogconsultants.com> wrote:


It can be faster but the net benefit is usually negative
when considering the massive amount of time spent commuting.

Physical presence makes a big difference. Some decisions are
really inportant.

Of course decisions are important, but that\'s not the same thing
at all as physical presence being important. With
teleconferencing software, meetings can be held that are
\"virtually\" the same as in person meetings (pun intended).

I\'m working on a project where the contributors are in at least
four different countries. Our meetings are every bit as
effective as face to face meetings if not moreso. In these video
meetings people actually take care not to step on one another\'s
speech.


That can be tough online. I found that when 10 time zones away the
latency can be hard to overcome. Depends a bit on country and
infrastructure on the other side(s). I have a 75Mbps link but some
don\'t. You almost have to say \"Over\" at the end of your
transmission. However, I found it all works well in the end.

We have that sort of scattering with people in California and in
eastern Europe. No latency issues... I mean really? Latency is only
an issue when you have a local problem these days.


It\'s a long distance issue. The packets get routed via all sorts of
infrastructure along the way. Do a ping to a European web site and
mostly you find something north of 150msec. Add to that latencies in the
computers themselves and it becomes easy for people to fall into someone
else speaking.

The Internet is not set up that way with lots of twists and turns unless someone local is doing it. The packets with a Zoom connection only have to reach the Zoom server and that end of the connection is highly optimized.

If your computer is adding local delays it\'s a crap computer and would do that on short hop connections as well.

Finally, 150 ms is not a delay that will interfere with voice comms, even in both directions. That\'s a small fraction of a second and barely noticed.

So your analysis is faulty.

I notice that problem only when overseas parties are participating,
hardly ever with anyone is on the US West Coast.

I reiterate, if you are seeing problems with overseas connections you are seeing their local issues. The Internet can get you to any major country in the world with largely imperceptible delays.

For example, I just pinged my old health care provideer in Europe for a
test, 171-175msec. It is a very large company with good IT
infrastructure. Pinging Intel in California results in 12-17msec.

Irrelevant because 170 ms is not noticeable in conversation... well, maybe \"not noticeable\" is not the right word as it could be noticed perhaps, but it is on the edge of perceptible.

... We do on occasion
have bandwidth issues which are also local problems. I don\'t turn on
my video because of my Internet connection being poor in both latency
and bandwidth.


See? That\'s what I mean. IME the audio latency does not improve when
turning off the video. That we only do when the bandwidth on the other
side is too skimpy.

\"See\" what? I already said this is a problem at my end. Turning off the video prevents the drop outs in audio because it is harder to get a large bandwidth through a connection than a narrow bandwidth without latency issues.. Bottom line is when someone is breaking up they turn off their video and the audio works. I guess it could just be coincidence, but after how many times of seeing this do you accept a connection?

The goofy thing is the bandwidth issues show up first in the audio
rather than letting the video degrade. Without audio the whole thing
is pointless. We tried one of the other services because of the 40
minute meeting limitation on Zoom for free accounts and found the
other service was very blurry when the camera moved. Zoom was much
more clear. Maybe the other service was preserving bandwidth, lol.


That is one of my pet peeve. So far Zoom is one of the few services
where their engineers understand that audio is #1, always. Us guys in
the Signal Corps 40-some years ago already knew that back then.

I agree, but I don\'t know Zoom is any better than the others with audio. We see problems with audio drop outs and the video will be fine. That\'s when we turn off the video. So clearly they are not giving audio a priority.

A friend had a VOIP connection through her cable modem. Seems they have a way of prioritizing the audio packages. I don\'t think it required cooperation at the ISP, but not sure. She brought it to my place one and it worked here with a different ISP, but my WISP is connected to the rest of the Internet via the same company she is with, so maybe that\'s why it was working well. She never saw dropouts even though my WISP is very poor in general. My phone doesn\'t work all that well over this WISP connection.

--

Rick C.

++ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
++ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Joerg]

On 2020-07-29 12:50, Ricketty C wrote:

On Wednesday, July 29, 2020 at 2:29:19 PM UTC-4, Joerg wrote:
On 2020-07-29 11:08, Ricketty C wrote:
On Wednesday, July 29, 2020 at 1:35:46 PM UTC-4, Joerg wrote:
On 2020-07-29 10:27, Ricketty C wrote:
On Wednesday, July 29, 2020 at 12:50:41 PM UTC-4,
jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 29 Jul 2020 09:33:09 -0700, Joerg
news@analogconsultants.com> wrote:


It can be faster but the net benefit is usually negative
when considering the massive amount of time spent commuting.

Physical presence makes a big difference. Some decisions are
really inportant.

Of course decisions are important, but that\'s not the same thing
at all as physical presence being important. With
teleconferencing software, meetings can be held that are
\"virtually\" the same as in person meetings (pun intended).

I\'m working on a project where the contributors are in at least
four different countries. Our meetings are every bit as
effective as face to face meetings if not moreso. In these video
meetings people actually take care not to step on one another\'s
speech.


That can be tough online. I found that when 10 time zones away the
latency can be hard to overcome. Depends a bit on country and
infrastructure on the other side(s). I have a 75Mbps link but some
don\'t. You almost have to say \"Over\" at the end of your
transmission. However, I found it all works well in the end.

We have that sort of scattering with people in California and in
eastern Europe. No latency issues... I mean really? Latency is only
an issue when you have a local problem these days.


It\'s a long distance issue. The packets get routed via all sorts of
infrastructure along the way. Do a ping to a European web site and
mostly you find something north of 150msec. Add to that latencies in the
computers themselves and it becomes easy for people to fall into someone
else speaking.

The Internet is not set up that way with lots of twists and turns unless someone local is doing it. The packets with a Zoom connection only have to reach the Zoom server and that end of the connection is highly optimized.

If your computer is adding local delays it\'s a crap computer and would do that on short hop connections as well.

Finally, 150 ms is not a delay that will interfere with voice comms, even in both directions. That\'s a small fraction of a second and barely noticed.

So your analysis is faulty.

Nonsense.

[...]

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

 

[Don Y]

On 7/29/2020 12:50 PM, Ricketty C wrote:

On Wednesday, July 29, 2020 at 2:29:19 PM UTC-4, Joerg wrote:
It\'s a long distance issue. The packets get routed via all sorts of
infrastructure along the way. Do a ping to a European web site and mostly
you find something north of 150msec. Add to that latencies in the
computers themselves and it becomes easy for people to fall into someone
else speaking.

The Internet is not set up that way with lots of twists and turns unless
someone local is doing it. The packets with a Zoom connection only have to
reach the Zoom server and that end of the connection is highly optimized.

If your computer is adding local delays it\'s a crap computer and would do
that on short hop connections as well.

tracert is your friend.

 

[Ricketty C]

On Wednesday, July 29, 2020 at 4:09:25 PM UTC-4, Don Y wrote:

On 7/29/2020 12:50 PM, Ricketty C wrote:
On Wednesday, July 29, 2020 at 2:29:19 PM UTC-4, Joerg wrote:
It\'s a long distance issue. The packets get routed via all sorts of
infrastructure along the way. Do a ping to a European web site and mostly
you find something north of 150msec. Add to that latencies in the
computers themselves and it becomes easy for people to fall into someone
else speaking.

The Internet is not set up that way with lots of twists and turns unless
someone local is doing it. The packets with a Zoom connection only have to
reach the Zoom server and that end of the connection is highly optimized.

If your computer is adding local delays it\'s a crap computer and would do
that on short hop connections as well.

tracert is your friend.

Not very reliable unless you trace the correct item. A tracert of zoom.com times out after 9 hops. Does that mean the Zoom application won\'t work? Hardly. I don\'t know what server they are using for the comms rather than their web site, but obviously it works pretty well.

Joerg has a mental block on the matter. I explain to him in simple English why his analysis is faulty and the best response he can muster is \"Nonsense\". Oh well.

--

Rick C.

--+ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
--+ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Don Y]

On 7/29/2020 1:20 PM, Ricketty C wrote:

On Wednesday, July 29, 2020 at 4:09:25 PM UTC-4, Don Y wrote:
On 7/29/2020 12:50 PM, Ricketty C wrote:
On Wednesday, July 29, 2020 at 2:29:19 PM UTC-4, Joerg wrote:
It\'s a long distance issue. The packets get routed via all sorts of
infrastructure along the way. Do a ping to a European web site and
mostly you find something north of 150msec. Add to that latencies in
the computers themselves and it becomes easy for people to fall into
someone else speaking.

The Internet is not set up that way with lots of twists and turns
unless someone local is doing it. The packets with a Zoom connection
only have to reach the Zoom server and that end of the connection is
highly optimized.

If your computer is adding local delays it\'s a crap computer and would
do that on short hop connections as well.

tracert is your friend.

Not very reliable unless you trace the correct item.

D\'uh...

A tracert of zoom.com
times out after 9 hops. Does that mean the Zoom application won\'t work?
Hardly. I don\'t know what server they are using for the comms rather than
their web site, but obviously it works pretty well.

Examine the ACTIVE connection used by the process when it is running.

On a windows machine, you can also use pathping.

The point is to see how many boxes (hops) the traffic passes through.

Note that zoom may employ a CDN to help route traffic more directly.

 

[John Larkin]

On Tue, 28 Jul 2020 05:58:02 +0200, Gerhard Hoffmann <dk4xp@arcor.de>
wrote:

Am 27.07.20 um 23:11 schrieb Klaus Kragelund:
In Denmark we shut down completely 11th of March, and in my company we went back to work fully mid June, with some people starting mid May

We have the situation under control (so far) since people respected the guidelines and the pullback was strong

We have had about 2000 cases per million people, 6 times lower than the US. I hope it will be under control soon in the US

We in .de had as much cases in total as the US as the US has in 3 days
currently. Yes, we are only 25% of the US people. But the US is only
25% of China\'s people. _They_ have stopped their epidemic.

Yes, the Communist Party says so.

 

[Joerg]

On 2020-07-29 13:30, John Larkin wrote:

On Tue, 28 Jul 2020 05:58:02 +0200, Gerhard Hoffmann <dk4xp@arcor.de
wrote:

Am 27.07.20 um 23:11 schrieb Klaus Kragelund:
In Denmark we shut down completely 11th of March, and in my company we went back to work fully mid June, with some people starting mid May

We have the situation under control (so far) since people respected the guidelines and the pullback was strong

We have had about 2000 cases per million people, 6 times lower than the US. I hope it will be under control soon in the US

We in .de had as much cases in total as the US as the US has in 3 days
currently. Yes, we are only 25% of the US people. But the US is only
25% of China\'s people. _They_ have stopped their epidemic.

Yes, the Communist Party says so.

They did manage to stop most elements of freedom though ...

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

 

[Ricketty C]

On Wednesday, July 29, 2020 at 4:29:35 PM UTC-4, Don Y wrote:

On 7/29/2020 1:20 PM, Ricketty C wrote:
On Wednesday, July 29, 2020 at 4:09:25 PM UTC-4, Don Y wrote:
On 7/29/2020 12:50 PM, Ricketty C wrote:
On Wednesday, July 29, 2020 at 2:29:19 PM UTC-4, Joerg wrote:
It\'s a long distance issue. The packets get routed via all sorts of
infrastructure along the way. Do a ping to a European web site and
mostly you find something north of 150msec. Add to that latencies in
the computers themselves and it becomes easy for people to fall into
someone else speaking.

The Internet is not set up that way with lots of twists and turns
unless someone local is doing it. The packets with a Zoom connection
only have to reach the Zoom server and that end of the connection is
highly optimized.

If your computer is adding local delays it\'s a crap computer and would
do that on short hop connections as well.

tracert is your friend.

Not very reliable unless you trace the correct item.

D\'uh...

A tracert of zoom.com
times out after 9 hops. Does that mean the Zoom application won\'t work?
Hardly. I don\'t know what server they are using for the comms rather than
their web site, but obviously it works pretty well.

Examine the ACTIVE connection used by the process when it is running.

On a windows machine, you can also use pathping.

The point is to see how many boxes (hops) the traffic passes through.

Note that zoom may employ a CDN to help route traffic more directly.

Thanks, but I\'m not that worried about it. Zoom works for me well enough. I don\'t really need to dig into the far reaches of the Internet to find out the limiting factor is my connection.

Knowing the \"hops\" is not at all important really. Once you reach the higher levels of connectivity the delays become limited by the speed of light. There is nothing I can do about the local delays on either end.

I keep a ping running in a DOS box for address 8.8.8.8 which is a Google name server or something huge like that. When I\'m getting ping times mostly below 50 ms I know my link is working ok. Around 9 to 10 pm it will start showing 100 ms pings and sometimes time out. Last holiday weekend it was timing out at least on every 10th packet for three days and I could barely check email.

Do you think I need to try to analyze Zoom traffic?

Yes, I am sure Zoom uses any manner of optimization techniques. That is my point. The long distance aspect of the connection is not a major factor in the performance of the tool. The problems typically lie in either the local interconnect or I suppose at any given time the servers can get overloaded. But the backbone of the Internet simply is big enough and designed so it doesn\'t create significant delays other than speed of light. You can have a phone call on the telecom network anywhere on earth without significant delays. So even speed of light is not a serious issue unless you are using geosynchronous sattelites.

--

Rick C.

-+- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
-+- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Don Y]

On 7/29/2020 4:23 PM, Ricketty C wrote:

On Wednesday, July 29, 2020 at 4:29:35 PM UTC-4, Don Y wrote:
On 7/29/2020 1:20 PM, Ricketty C wrote:
On Wednesday, July 29, 2020 at 4:09:25 PM UTC-4, Don Y wrote:
On 7/29/2020 12:50 PM, Ricketty C wrote:
On Wednesday, July 29, 2020 at 2:29:19 PM UTC-4, Joerg wrote:
It\'s a long distance issue. The packets get routed via all sorts
of infrastructure along the way. Do a ping to a European web site
and mostly you find something north of 150msec. Add to that
latencies in the computers themselves and it becomes easy for
people to fall into someone else speaking.

The Internet is not set up that way with lots of twists and turns
unless someone local is doing it. The packets with a Zoom
connection only have to reach the Zoom server and that end of the
connection is highly optimized.

If your computer is adding local delays it\'s a crap computer and
would do that on short hop connections as well.

tracert is your friend.

Not very reliable unless you trace the correct item.

D\'uh...

A tracert of zoom.com times out after 9 hops. Does that mean the Zoom
application won\'t work? Hardly. I don\'t know what server they are using
for the comms rather than their web site, but obviously it works pretty
well.

Examine the ACTIVE connection used by the process when it is running.

On a windows machine, you can also use pathping.

The point is to see how many boxes (hops) the traffic passes through.

Note that zoom may employ a CDN to help route traffic more directly.

Thanks, but I\'m not that worried about it. Zoom works for me well enough.
I don\'t really need to dig into the far reaches of the Internet to find out
the limiting factor is my connection.

The point was to SHOW where the limits are incurred. Geographical distance
has little bearing on latency (my ISP\'s comm center is < 3 miles as the
crow flies; phoenix is ~100 miles beyond that)

Knowing the \"hops\" is not at all important really. Once you reach the
higher levels of connectivity the delays become limited by the speed of
light. There is nothing I can do about the local delays on either end.

The \"hops\" are important because they occur at speeds many orders of magnitude
SLOWER than \"the speed of light\". E.g., it takes me *7* hops to get out of my
ISP:

1 to my router
+1 to the transponder on the roof
+1 over-the-air to the (remote) access point at my ISP
+1 to my ISP\'s backbone
+1 to <something> within their domain
+1 to their outbound portal
+1 to phoenix (and the world beyond)
+12 more to \"google.com\" (well, the resolution of \"google.com\" that is
applicable to *me*!)

But, I\'m at the phoenix node in ~18ms while it takes an additional ~40ms
to get to \"google.com\" from there. So, each hop incurs a ~2-3ms hit.

 

[Ricketty C]

On Wednesday, July 29, 2020 at 7:57:00 PM UTC-4, Don Y wrote:

On 7/29/2020 4:23 PM, Ricketty C wrote:
On Wednesday, July 29, 2020 at 4:29:35 PM UTC-4, Don Y wrote:
On 7/29/2020 1:20 PM, Ricketty C wrote:
On Wednesday, July 29, 2020 at 4:09:25 PM UTC-4, Don Y wrote:
On 7/29/2020 12:50 PM, Ricketty C wrote:
On Wednesday, July 29, 2020 at 2:29:19 PM UTC-4, Joerg wrote:
It\'s a long distance issue. The packets get routed via all sorts
of infrastructure along the way. Do a ping to a European web site
and mostly you find something north of 150msec. Add to that
latencies in the computers themselves and it becomes easy for
people to fall into someone else speaking.

The Internet is not set up that way with lots of twists and turns
unless someone local is doing it. The packets with a Zoom
connection only have to reach the Zoom server and that end of the
connection is highly optimized.

If your computer is adding local delays it\'s a crap computer and
would do that on short hop connections as well.

tracert is your friend.

Not very reliable unless you trace the correct item.

D\'uh...

A tracert of zoom.com times out after 9 hops. Does that mean the Zoom
application won\'t work? Hardly. I don\'t know what server they are using
for the comms rather than their web site, but obviously it works pretty
well.

Examine the ACTIVE connection used by the process when it is running.

On a windows machine, you can also use pathping.

The point is to see how many boxes (hops) the traffic passes through.

Note that zoom may employ a CDN to help route traffic more directly.

Thanks, but I\'m not that worried about it. Zoom works for me well enough.
I don\'t really need to dig into the far reaches of the Internet to find out
the limiting factor is my connection.

The point was to SHOW where the limits are incurred. Geographical distance
has little bearing on latency (my ISP\'s comm center is < 3 miles as the
crow flies; phoenix is ~100 miles beyond that)

Knowing the \"hops\" is not at all important really. Once you reach the
higher levels of connectivity the delays become limited by the speed of
light. There is nothing I can do about the local delays on either end.

The \"hops\" are important because they occur at speeds many orders of magnitude
SLOWER than \"the speed of light\". E.g., it takes me *7* hops to get out of my
ISP:

1 to my router
+1 to the transponder on the roof
+1 over-the-air to the (remote) access point at my ISP
+1 to my ISP\'s backbone
+1 to <something> within their domain
+1 to their outbound portal
+1 to phoenix (and the world beyond)
+12 more to \"google.com\" (well, the resolution of \"google.com\" that is
applicable to *me*!)

But, I\'m at the phoenix node in ~18ms while it takes an additional ~40ms
to get to \"google.com\" from there. So, each hop incurs a ~2-3ms hit.

Yes, what does knowing any of that do for you? It is the same situation everywhere. Further, there is nothing you can do about any of that. Unless you can assign delays to individual hops you can\'t say anything about how the timing is distributed.

I don\'t agree that the hops are any more important than the speed of light. The speed of light is 16 ms from me to the west coast. My local connection is getting bad now, but I will check it out if I am up later tonight and see how close the ping time is to that.

The processing that goes on in a \"server\" is pretty amazing. It doesn\'t take milliseconds to route a packet at the higher levels of the Internet. Only the local stuff is done on hardware that is not much more complex than a PC.

--

Rick C.

-++ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
-++ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Joe Chisolm]

On Wed, 29 Jul 2020 11:29:19 -0700, Joerg wrote:

On 2020-07-29 11:08, Ricketty C wrote:
On Wednesday, July 29, 2020 at 1:35:46 PM UTC-4, Joerg wrote:
On 2020-07-29 10:27, Ricketty C wrote:
On Wednesday, July 29, 2020 at 12:50:41 PM UTC-4,
jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 29 Jul 2020 09:33:09 -0700, Joerg
news@analogconsultants.com> wrote:


It can be faster but the net benefit is usually negative when
considering the massive amount of time spent commuting.

Physical presence makes a big difference. Some decisions are really
inportant.

Of course decisions are important, but that\'s not the same thing at
all as physical presence being important. With teleconferencing
software, meetings can be held that are \"virtually\" the same as in
person meetings (pun intended).

I\'m working on a project where the contributors are in at least four
different countries. Our meetings are every bit as effective as face
to face meetings if not moreso. In these video meetings people
actually take care not to step on one another\'s speech.


That can be tough online. I found that when 10 time zones away the
latency can be hard to overcome. Depends a bit on country and
infrastructure on the other side(s). I have a 75Mbps link but some
don\'t. You almost have to say \"Over\" at the end of your transmission.
However, I found it all works well in the end.

We have that sort of scattering with people in California and in
eastern Europe. No latency issues... I mean really? Latency is only
an issue when you have a local problem these days.


It\'s a long distance issue. The packets get routed via all sorts of
infrastructure along the way. Do a ping to a European web site and
mostly you find something north of 150msec. Add to that latencies in the
computers themselves and it becomes easy for people to fall into someone
else speaking.

I notice that problem only when overseas parties are participating,
hardly ever with anyone is on the US West Coast.

For example, I just pinged my old health care provideer in Europe for a
test, 171-175msec. It is a very large company with good IT
infrastructure. Pinging Intel in California results in 12-17msec.


... We do on occasion
have bandwidth issues which are also local problems. I don\'t turn on
my video because of my Internet connection being poor in both latency
and bandwidth.


See? That\'s what I mean. IME the audio latency does not improve when
turning off the video. That we only do when the bandwidth on the other
side is too skimpy.


The goofy thing is the bandwidth issues show up first in the audio
rather than letting the video degrade. Without audio the whole thing
is pointless. We tried one of the other services because of the 40
minute meeting limitation on Zoom for free accounts and found the other
service was very blurry when the camera moved. Zoom was much more
clear. Maybe the other service was preserving bandwidth, lol.


That is one of my pet peeve. So far Zoom is one of the few services
where their engineers understand that audio is #1, always. Us guys in
the Signal Corps 40-some years ago already knew that back then.

ITU says 150ms one way, so called \"mouth to ear\". Cisco says that
can be pushed to a 200ms budget. Also > 30ms packet jitter can
be a problem. If you examine the video you normally see very
little movement with a conference. Some static power point slide
while people talk. Even video of people talking the back ground
is very static. Frame to frame compression can be very high, thus
video can be good but audio is poor.

I probably average 8 to 10 hours a week video calls using Cisco
webex. 25Mbs link and no real issues. They have a free version
but it has a 50min meeting limit. Entry level paid version is
something like $14/month.

--
Chisolm
Texas-American

 

[Don Y]

On 7/29/2020 5:35 PM, Ricketty C wrote:

On Wednesday, July 29, 2020 at 7:57:00 PM UTC-4, Don Y wrote:
On 7/29/2020 4:23 PM, Ricketty C wrote:
On Wednesday, July 29, 2020 at 4:29:35 PM UTC-4, Don Y wrote:
On 7/29/2020 1:20 PM, Ricketty C wrote:
On Wednesday, July 29, 2020 at 4:09:25 PM UTC-4, Don Y wrote:
On 7/29/2020 12:50 PM, Ricketty C wrote:
On Wednesday, July 29, 2020 at 2:29:19 PM UTC-4, Joerg wrote:
It\'s a long distance issue. The packets get routed via all
sorts of infrastructure along the way. Do a ping to a European
web site and mostly you find something north of 150msec. Add
to that latencies in the computers themselves and it becomes
easy for people to fall into someone else speaking.

The Internet is not set up that way with lots of twists and
turns unless someone local is doing it. The packets with a
Zoom connection only have to reach the Zoom server and that end
of the connection is highly optimized.

If your computer is adding local delays it\'s a crap computer
and would do that on short hop connections as well.

tracert is your friend.

Examine the ACTIVE connection used by the process when it is running.

The point was to SHOW where the limits are incurred. Geographical
distance has little bearing on latency (my ISP\'s comm center is < 3 miles
as the crow flies; phoenix is ~100 miles beyond that)

Knowing the \"hops\" is not at all important really. Once you reach the
higher levels of connectivity the delays become limited by the speed of
light. There is nothing I can do about the local delays on either end.

The \"hops\" are important because they occur at speeds many orders of
magnitude SLOWER than \"the speed of light\". E.g., it takes me *7* hops to
get out of my ISP:

But, I\'m at the phoenix node in ~18ms while it takes an additional ~40ms
to get to \"google.com\" from there. So, each hop incurs a ~2-3ms hit.

Yes, what does knowing any of that do for you? It is the same situation
everywhere. Further, there is nothing you can do about any of that. Unless
you can assign delays to individual hops you can\'t say anything about how
the timing is distributed.

If you take the time to reread the thread, you will see that you were arguing
with Joerg about the nature of the delays. I\'ve given you a tool to locate
and quantify those delays in YOUR \"zoom connections\". Presumably, you would
suggest Joerg do the same with the connections that he complains about.

With HARD FACTS you can then dispute or affirm any problems that either of
you may -- or may not -- be seeing.

If you\'re not interested in understanding \"why\" there is -- or is not -- a
problem, then that\'s your perogative. *I* like understanding the \"why\"
instead of just handwaving it away. Knowing that I have to move through
6 devices before I can \"get out\" gives me a leg up in understanding why/when
I lose connectivity -- have my packets even left my ISP\'s domain?? Is
the problem one that my ISP is likely to be able to resolve? Or, is the
problem upstream from them??

I don\'t agree that the hops are any more important than the speed of light.
The speed of light is 16 ms from me to the west coast. My local connection
is getting bad now, but I will check it out if I am up later tonight and see
how close the ping time is to that.

The processing that goes on in a \"server\" is pretty amazing. It doesn\'t
take milliseconds to route a packet at the higher levels of the Internet.
Only the local stuff is done on hardware that is not much more complex than
a PC.

 

[Ricketty C]

On Thursday, July 30, 2020 at 12:44:53 AM UTC-4, Don Y wrote:

On 7/29/2020 5:35 PM, Ricketty C wrote:
On Wednesday, July 29, 2020 at 7:57:00 PM UTC-4, Don Y wrote:
On 7/29/2020 4:23 PM, Ricketty C wrote:
On Wednesday, July 29, 2020 at 4:29:35 PM UTC-4, Don Y wrote:
On 7/29/2020 1:20 PM, Ricketty C wrote:
On Wednesday, July 29, 2020 at 4:09:25 PM UTC-4, Don Y wrote:
On 7/29/2020 12:50 PM, Ricketty C wrote:
On Wednesday, July 29, 2020 at 2:29:19 PM UTC-4, Joerg wrote:
It\'s a long distance issue. The packets get routed via all
sorts of infrastructure along the way. Do a ping to a European
web site and mostly you find something north of 150msec. Add
to that latencies in the computers themselves and it becomes
easy for people to fall into someone else speaking.

The Internet is not set up that way with lots of twists and
turns unless someone local is doing it. The packets with a
Zoom connection only have to reach the Zoom server and that end
of the connection is highly optimized.

If your computer is adding local delays it\'s a crap computer
and would do that on short hop connections as well.

tracert is your friend.

Examine the ACTIVE connection used by the process when it is running..

The point was to SHOW where the limits are incurred. Geographical
distance has little bearing on latency (my ISP\'s comm center is < 3 miles
as the crow flies; phoenix is ~100 miles beyond that)

Knowing the \"hops\" is not at all important really. Once you reach the
higher levels of connectivity the delays become limited by the speed of
light. There is nothing I can do about the local delays on either end.

The \"hops\" are important because they occur at speeds many orders of
magnitude SLOWER than \"the speed of light\". E.g., it takes me *7* hops to
get out of my ISP:

But, I\'m at the phoenix node in ~18ms while it takes an additional ~40ms
to get to \"google.com\" from there. So, each hop incurs a ~2-3ms hit.

Yes, what does knowing any of that do for you? It is the same situation
everywhere. Further, there is nothing you can do about any of that. Unless
you can assign delays to individual hops you can\'t say anything about how
the timing is distributed.

If you take the time to reread the thread, you will see that you were arguing
with Joerg about the nature of the delays. I\'ve given you a tool to locate
and quantify those delays in YOUR \"zoom connections\". Presumably, you would
suggest Joerg do the same with the connections that he complains about.

With HARD FACTS you can then dispute or affirm any problems that either of
you may -- or may not -- be seeing.

If you\'re not interested in understanding \"why\" there is -- or is not -- a
problem, then that\'s your perogative. *I* like understanding the \"why\"
instead of just handwaving it away. Knowing that I have to move through
6 devices before I can \"get out\" gives me a leg up in understanding why/when
I lose connectivity -- have my packets even left my ISP\'s domain?? Is
the problem one that my ISP is likely to be able to resolve? Or, is the
problem upstream from them??

I don\'t agree that the hops are any more important than the speed of light.
The speed of light is 16 ms from me to the west coast. My local connection
is getting bad now, but I will check it out if I am up later tonight and see
how close the ping time is to that.

The processing that goes on in a \"server\" is pretty amazing. It doesn\'t
take milliseconds to route a packet at the higher levels of the Internet.
Only the local stuff is done on hardware that is not much more complex than
a PC.

I can\'t measure the end to end delays. My connection is only to the Zoom server. Someone else\'s connection is from their source to the server. I don\'t have an IP address for the Zoom server so I can\'t even check mine.

Your tools don\'t provide any indication of where the problem is, only that there is a problem between two end points. I already know the problem with the other guy\'s audio is at his end because there are four or more people in the conference call and when his audio starts to drop out everyone hears it, not just me.

Do I not understand what you\'ve said? What tool do you have that will point to the source of the problem other than that it is in my link or not? I already know my link is crappy, that\'s why I turn off my video. Nothing I can learn about details of my link will be of any value unless it in my home which I know it is not.

I don\'t agree that counting hops is useful. I have the same number of local hops to reach 8.8.8.8 as the Zoom server and at this time of night the latencies are low and consistent. During prime time when everyone is watching videos the latency gets worse. I think I mentioned before that on the holiday weekends when everyone is here at the lake it is a disaster. The WISP provider said he would be installing a new fiber (I thought his network connections were wireless, but I guess they go to fiber somewhere) to a local tower and things will improve. Maybe I can share video on Zoom then.

Joe talked about 25 Mbps being ok. I have 7 Mbps max and often only see 2 or 3 Mbps.

--

Rick C.

+-- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
+-- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209