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By now, most of you are probably familiar with Lakenet's High-Speed wireless internet system. For your convenience and greatest accuracy, we have added an Internet Speed test for our wireless customers in Silver Bay and Two Harbors. Click the link below and test from Chicago or Minneapolis. Multiple tests will give the best results: Internet Speed Tests are deceiving. Here's why: Internet speed is measured by something called latency. Latency is measured by the amount of time (in milliseconds) it takes for a packet of information to be sent round trip between a starting and destination point. It is usually determined to see how many 'hops" are between your computer and the website you are at. It is not uncommon to have 30 or more "hops". The internet is very dynamic. Hops are created by one Internet Service Provider (ISP) handing off to another ISP. They can also be created by the amount of equipment an Internet Service Provider has. Here's an example. Lakenet has Minnesota Power's subsidiary, Enventis Telecom, as it's backbone provider. Enventis Telecom, in turn, has AT&T and Cable & Wireless as their backbone providers - they are called Tier 1 or National Providers which means they can haul traffic the farthest on their network before handing off to another ISP. LakeNet is a regional ISP (Tier 3). So, let's say you are going to the website www.pcpitstop.com. The packets would leave Lakenet, go to Enventis Telecom, where they have a choice: either go through AT&T's network or Cable and Wireless' network to get to the ISP that it thinks is closest to the ISP hosting pcpitstop's website. (PcPitstops website is hosted in Texas) That's where the hops come in. If it determines it takes 30 hops to use Cable & Wireless to get from Minnesota to Texas, and 50 hops to use AT&T, it will use Cable & Wireless. This happens through all the providers with more than one backbone provider. This process is called BGP. (Border Gate Protocol) Here's the catch. BGP ONLY looks at hops, not latency, thus if an ISP with 2 or more backbone providers has congestion on one of their connections, and that connection is chosen as the "least number of hops" the packet will sit and try to go through that pipe for days instead of taking the other route. The other route may be 100 hops but only take a few milliseconds! So, what I'm getting at here is Internet speed depends on your local ISP, which website you're at, how many hops it takes to get there, and if there are problems with any of the connections along the way. In general the less hops the better! Just because on website may be slow, doesn't mean your connection is slow. Just the connection to that website. Lakenet, obviously only has control over the wireless network in Two Harbors and Silver Bay, along with the size of the pipe to Duluth. Beyond that, it's out of our control. The bandwidth test that I've linked you to is very accurate and the one Lakenet and CLP will warranty. In other words, it's an easy way to see that we have not "oversubscribed" the network. If you are interested, any computer can trace the number of hops from Lakenet to the website you're at. The process is called Trace Route. Simply, go to your command console (Start, Run, type cmd) and at the black screen type: tracert 0.0.0.0 (where 0.0.0.0 is the IP address of the website you want to trace) Anything less than 200 milliseconds is normal. Anything over is getting bad. Sincerely, Kevin Olson Communication Manager |
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