I have been a long-time reader of your site and greatly value your objective testing of home networking gear. One thing I have noticed recently is that you are testing more and more multi-drop networking technologies like MoCA, HPNA, HomePlug and 802.11n. These technologies all multiplex multiple users with Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) techniques. With TDMA big packets aren't nearly as problematic as small packets. A single 200kb VOIP RTP stream can cause more load on a TDMA network than using TCP to transfer files between two PCs. In essence every packet has to "interrupt" the communication channel, causing latency and jitter for all users. Latency and jitter are death to streaming video, VOIP and online gaming. Quality of Service (QoS) is supposed to help but as your recent video shootout showed doesn't seem to be effective.
So how about adding some real-world Quality of Experience (QoE) testing? This would be a relatively simple test with some common home networking tasks:
- Do a PC to PC file transfer
- While streaming HD video off a NAS
- While holding a VOIP conversation
- While Playing an online XBOX or PS3 game
Thanks again for the informative site,
Drew
So how about adding some real-world Quality of Experience (QoE) testing? This would be a relatively simple test with some common home networking tasks:
- Do a PC to PC file transfer
- While streaming HD video off a NAS
- While holding a VOIP conversation
- While Playing an online XBOX or PS3 game
Thanks again for the informative site,
Drew
