5 ms·

I've tried using Google products from Africa (Ethiopia ... last time this January), and generally, it is right out unusable. JS-heavy apps like GMail will never

by samuell 10y ago

I've tried using Google products from Africa (Ethiopia ... last time this January), and generally, it is right out unusable. JS-heavy apps like GMail will never load properly at all. This while the connection in itself is not THAT bad. I use to use a 3G/4G mobile connection and it generally works excellent, with pretty quick load times, for everything else than javascript-heavy web apps. I have a hard time understanding why this issue is not paid more attention. Ethiopia alone has some 99 million inhabitants, with smart phone usage growing by the hour. Some sources say "the country could have some 103 million mobile subscribers by 2020, as well as 56 million internet subscribers" [1]. [1] https://www.budde.com.au/Research/Ethiopia-Telecoms-Mobile-and-Broadband-Statistics-and-Analyses https://www.budde.com.au/Research/Ethiopia-Telecoms-Mobile-a...

tangue 10y ago
It's not only about connection speed but also about infrastructure. If you look at this map https://cloud.google.com/about/locations/ https://cloud.google.com/about/locations/ you'll see that your packets have a looong way to reach their data center. AWS is no better than Google on this point. Guess it's not bankable
- witty_username 10y ago
  That only adds about 200-300ms RTT I'd guess. I live in India and use many websites which are hosted in the US, and they work fine.
  - estsauver 10y ago
    (Hello from Kenya) There are usually CDN nodes in India. Cloudfront has edge nodes there, google's cdn does. There's also a Mumbai AWS datacentre. When you get far away from the common edges, it gets real noticeable.
    - witty_username 10y ago
      ~$ ping imgur.com PING imgur.com (151.101.40.193) 56(84) bytes of data. 64 bytes from 151.101.40.193 (151.101.40.193): icmp_seq=1 ttl=53 time=342 ms imgur.com works fine ~$ ping python.org PING python.org (23.253.135.79) 56(84) bytes of data. 64 bytes from 23.253.135.79 (23.253.135.79): icmp_seq=1 ttl=48 time=267 ms python.org works fine news.ycombinator.com and reddit.com also works fine even though I'm logged in (there's about a 300ms, 700ms delay in the Network tab of Chrome's devtools for news.ycombinator.com and reddit.com)
      - tangue 10y ago
        PING imgur.com (151.101.12.193): 56 data bytes 64 bytes from 151.101.12.193: icmp_seq=3 ttl=51 time=499.633 ms 64 bytes from 151.101.12.193: icmp_seq=65 ttl=51 time=330.021 ms 64 bytes from 151.101.12.193: icmp_seq=66 ttl=51 time=557.491 ms 64 bytes from 151.101.12.193: icmp_seq=67 ttl=51 time=478.380 ms 64 bytes from 151.101.12.193: icmp_seq=68 ttl=51 time=400.365 ms Request timeout for icmp_seq 69 PING python.org (23.253.135.79): 56 data bytes 64 bytes from 23.253.135.79: icmp_seq=0 ttl=44 time=615.871 ms 64 bytes from 23.253.135.79: icmp_seq=1 ttl=44 time=539.681 ms I'm on an island lost in the middle of the Indian Ocean. But ping weren't that different (50 ms more or less) on the continent (I went to RSA and Namibia)
cozzyd 10y ago
Gmail worked surprisingly well from Antarctica
fegul 10y ago
In Ethiopia's case, it's not so much the connection speed in Addis. There's a great deal of interference from the national Deep Packet Inspection filters that leads to timed-out requests, reset TCP connections, etc. JS-heavy apps make a lot of requests to background servers and should one of those requests fail, apps will hang. It's quite frustrating and I would often load pages with the console open to see which requests have failed so I'm not left wondering what happened.
- samuell 10y ago
  That's good to know, Thanks!
- tmd83 10y ago
  There can be whole lot of reason for this and it kind of make sense. What doesn't make sense is that for such a big company, such a big product thats the best Google/gmail can do. I can understand if scaling the gmail backend can be tough. I can appreciate gmails feature set of spam filtering, tagging but on the UI feature-set I don't see anything that revolutionary that makes it (according the chrome task manager) the heaviest tab in my browser ~500MB. I think thats to the point of shameful. I think the standard of whats considered slow, bloated, complex has become absurd. I think if the processor companies today release processors that say improves the single thread performance 10 times in two years gmails and facebooks of the world will eat all that up with marginal improvement in functionality. I'm talking about the client side, in the server side yeah they may make 10 times more complex analysis though most likely 80% will go to feeding us more accurate ad.
  - PatentTroll 10y ago
    That's why fastmail is such a breath of fresh air. It has lots of features and is wicked fast.
    - hobarrera 10y ago
      Agreed. I'm actually really impressed at how fast and responsive the UI is. As a user, it's probably one of the most responsive and functional UX's I've used in years.
lmm 10y ago
> I have a hard time understanding why this issue is not paid more attention. Ethiopia alone has some 99 million inhabitants, with smart phone usage growing by the hour. Some sources say "the country could have some 103 million mobile subscribers by 2020, as well as 56 million internet subscribers" [1]. How much disposable income will they have though? Most web products like those you describe are produced by businesses looking to make money.
- fegul 10y ago
  You may be surprised. Certainly the number of people with disposable income will be less than in many other places but those that have disposable income often pay more. Tax on cars is upward of 200% and traffic is becoming a major issue. When it comes to services, another major challenge is that there are no widely accepted payment mechanisms besides cash and checks. Debit cards only work with ATMs and some very select retailers.
etatoby 10y ago
GMail has a HTML-only version that is much more lightweight and usable on slow / flaky connections. It's worth it to memorize or bookmark the address, in case you ever need it: http://mail.google.com/mail/h/ http://mail.google.com/mail/h/ (on mobile browsers you need to "request desktop version" and then paste the address again, before you can see it)
- j_s 10y ago
  Thank you for sharing this link. Here is a related HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7513388 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7513388 My problem with accessing the low-bandwidth Google tools with archaic browsers (http://dplus-browser.sourceforge.net/ http://dplus-browser.sourceforge.net/, etc.) is that Google still requires the high-bandwith login. Are you aware of any alternative login URLs or authentication mechanisms?
  - i336_ 10y ago
    I just tried the two-year old 3.4-dev copy of NetSurf I had buried on this computer, and was able to login to Gmail's Basic HTML.

by samuell 10y ago

tangue 10y ago

It's not only about connection speed but also about infrastructure. If you look at this map https://cloud.google.com/about/locations/ https://cloud.google.com/about/locations/ you'll see that your packets have a looong way to reach their data center. AWS is no better than Google on this point. Guess it's not bankable

witty_username 10y ago
That only adds about 200-300ms RTT I'd guess. I live in India and use many websites which are hosted in the US, and they work fine.
- estsauver 10y ago
  (Hello from Kenya) There are usually CDN nodes in India. Cloudfront has edge nodes there, google's cdn does. There's also a Mumbai AWS datacentre. When you get far away from the common edges, it gets real noticeable.
  - witty_username 10y ago
    ~$ ping imgur.com PING imgur.com (151.101.40.193) 56(84) bytes of data. 64 bytes from 151.101.40.193 (151.101.40.193): icmp_seq=1 ttl=53 time=342 ms imgur.com works fine ~$ ping python.org PING python.org (23.253.135.79) 56(84) bytes of data. 64 bytes from 23.253.135.79 (23.253.135.79): icmp_seq=1 ttl=48 time=267 ms python.org works fine news.ycombinator.com and reddit.com also works fine even though I'm logged in (there's about a 300ms, 700ms delay in the Network tab of Chrome's devtools for news.ycombinator.com and reddit.com)
    - tangue 10y ago
      PING imgur.com (151.101.12.193): 56 data bytes 64 bytes from 151.101.12.193: icmp_seq=3 ttl=51 time=499.633 ms 64 bytes from 151.101.12.193: icmp_seq=65 ttl=51 time=330.021 ms 64 bytes from 151.101.12.193: icmp_seq=66 ttl=51 time=557.491 ms 64 bytes from 151.101.12.193: icmp_seq=67 ttl=51 time=478.380 ms 64 bytes from 151.101.12.193: icmp_seq=68 ttl=51 time=400.365 ms Request timeout for icmp_seq 69 PING python.org (23.253.135.79): 56 data bytes 64 bytes from 23.253.135.79: icmp_seq=0 ttl=44 time=615.871 ms 64 bytes from 23.253.135.79: icmp_seq=1 ttl=44 time=539.681 ms I'm on an island lost in the middle of the Indian Ocean. But ping weren't that different (50 ms more or less) on the continent (I went to RSA and Namibia)

cozzyd 10y ago

Gmail worked surprisingly well from Antarctica

fegul 10y ago

In Ethiopia's case, it's not so much the connection speed in Addis. There's a great deal of interference from the national Deep Packet Inspection filters that leads to timed-out requests, reset TCP connections, etc. JS-heavy apps make a lot of requests to background servers and should one of those requests fail, apps will hang. It's quite frustrating and I would often load pages with the console open to see which requests have failed so I'm not left wondering what happened.

samuell 10y ago
That's good to know, Thanks!
tmd83 10y ago
There can be whole lot of reason for this and it kind of make sense. What doesn't make sense is that for such a big company, such a big product thats the best Google/gmail can do. I can understand if scaling the gmail backend can be tough. I can appreciate gmails feature set of spam filtering, tagging but on the UI feature-set I don't see anything that revolutionary that makes it (according the chrome task manager) the heaviest tab in my browser ~500MB. I think thats to the point of shameful. I think the standard of whats considered slow, bloated, complex has become absurd. I think if the processor companies today release processors that say improves the single thread performance 10 times in two years gmails and facebooks of the world will eat all that up with marginal improvement in functionality. I'm talking about the client side, in the server side yeah they may make 10 times more complex analysis though most likely 80% will go to feeding us more accurate ad.
- PatentTroll 10y ago
  That's why fastmail is such a breath of fresh air. It has lots of features and is wicked fast.
  - hobarrera 10y ago
    Agreed. I'm actually really impressed at how fast and responsive the UI is. As a user, it's probably one of the most responsive and functional UX's I've used in years.

lmm 10y ago

> I have a hard time understanding why this issue is not paid more attention. Ethiopia alone has some 99 million inhabitants, with smart phone usage growing by the hour. Some sources say "the country could have some 103 million mobile subscribers by 2020, as well as 56 million internet subscribers" [1]. How much disposable income will they have though? Most web products like those you describe are produced by businesses looking to make money.

fegul 10y ago
You may be surprised. Certainly the number of people with disposable income will be less than in many other places but those that have disposable income often pay more. Tax on cars is upward of 200% and traffic is becoming a major issue. When it comes to services, another major challenge is that there are no widely accepted payment mechanisms besides cash and checks. Debit cards only work with ATMs and some very select retailers.

etatoby 10y ago

GMail has a HTML-only version that is much more lightweight and usable on slow / flaky connections. It's worth it to memorize or bookmark the address, in case you ever need it: http://mail.google.com/mail/h/ http://mail.google.com/mail/h/ (on mobile browsers you need to "request desktop version" and then paste the address again, before you can see it)

j_s 10y ago
Thank you for sharing this link. Here is a related HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7513388 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7513388 My problem with accessing the low-bandwidth Google tools with archaic browsers (http://dplus-browser.sourceforge.net/ http://dplus-browser.sourceforge.net/, etc.) is that Google still requires the high-bandwith login. Are you aware of any alternative login URLs or authentication mechanisms?
- i336_ 10y ago
  I just tried the two-year old 3.4-dev copy of NetSurf I had buried on this computer, and was able to login to Gmail's Basic HTML.