It means it feels ridiculously fast for websites inside the GFW.
speedtest.net results just run now (I'm in Shanghai, it's saturday morning, no VPN):
Shanghai-based server: ping 27ms, down 15.33Mbps, up 0.54Mbps
Beijing-based server: ping 31ms, down 17.49Mbps, up 0.55Mbps
London (UK)-based server: ping 270ms, down 6.17Mbps, up 0.56Mbps
I live in an older compound, my building has 12 floors, most of the others have 6, so this is not a new compound by any means, but we already have fiber, they're rolling it out gradually throughout the city.
This is actually pretty good for inside the GFW; keep in mind links are typically overloaded to the resource you are accessing, its not just about your final leg speed. So fiber really only fixes one part of the connection, Amdahl's law still applies.
Oddly enough, I actually sometimes find sites outside the GFW are a bit faster compared to some domestic Chinese sites inside the GFW. The internal Chinese internet just has lots of problems that they haven't worked through yet.
> keep in mind links are typically overloaded to the resource you are accessing, its not just about your final leg speed. So fiber really only fixes one part of the connection, Amdahl's law still applies.
Is the last mile not the bottleneck in China? It is in America, AFAIK.
Not when you are watching "Gangnam Style" on Youku. Anything video will be blocked in America anyways, so its Chinese sites only for that. It is true that I can't really do Apple to Apple comparisons.
> To ensure better performance, my Internet provider keeps a local copy of the popular YouTube content (caching), and when I watch a trending video, they send me the stream from their local cache. However, if I request a video that’s not contained in their current cache, I’m sent over the broader Internet to the actual YouTube content servers.
I have no doubt that the vast majority of American ISPs have cached Gangnam Style. In the US at least, Google/YouTube likely assists in this process.
True, that is quite good inside the GFW. As a comparison, I am in Beijing in an apartment from 2002, with a DSL connection that China Unicom sells as 4Mbps (the best I could buy here):
It depends how much you pay. I'm in a city 180km from Shanghai and switched to optical fiber recently with no extra charge. I have a plan of 7Mpbs including TV and internet with price of around 200 dollars equivalent per year. They have 20Mpbs plan but the price is different. The internet connection is still 4Mbps as I tested. The TV is much better than before. In Canada I use cable service, with the same speed I pay 50 dollars per month.
speedtest.net results just run now (I'm in Shanghai, it's saturday morning, no VPN):
Shanghai-based server: ping 27ms, down 15.33Mbps, up 0.54Mbps
Beijing-based server: ping 31ms, down 17.49Mbps, up 0.55Mbps
London (UK)-based server: ping 270ms, down 6.17Mbps, up 0.56Mbps
I live in an older compound, my building has 12 floors, most of the others have 6, so this is not a new compound by any means, but we already have fiber, they're rolling it out gradually throughout the city.