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Offer HN: I'll test your web app from Tanzania
- pyvpx 12y agoyou mind doing some traceroutes to 4.2.2.2 and 8.8.8.8 just out of curiosity? :)
- pbhjpbhj 12y ago8.8.8.8 is public DNS from Google. 4.2.2.2 is private DNS from Level3; see eg http://www.tummy.com/articles/famous-dns-server/ http://www.tummy.com/articles/famous-dns-server/ for a history.
- thebenedict 12y agoSure. I'm on Smile Tanzania atm, a 4G carrier (though slower than 4G in the US or Europe). This isn't the carrier I'll use for web app tests. http://dpaste.com/129AKD2 http://dpaste.com/129AKD2 http://dpaste.com/37YE2VY http://dpaste.com/37YE2VY
- nitinics 12y agoLooks like your provider is traversing through TATA Communications (AS6453) on both of those. Wonder what your latency would be with a SEACOM(AS37100) traversal, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_in_Tanzania http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_in_Tanzania Here are your downstream carrier options : http://www.cidr-report.org/cgi-bin/as-report?as=AS37100&v=4&view=2.0 http://www.cidr-report.org/cgi-bin/as-report?as=AS37100&v=4&...
- thebenedict 12y agoNeat. My rough understanding is that carriers here route traffic through SEACOM, EASSy (and likely others) to minimize cost and traffic. I don't think I can choose SEACOM specifically -- but I'm always up to test Cunningham's Law.
- nitinics 12y agoYour traffic traversed through SMILE>Zantel>Tata .. You may not be able to influence the best path to reach Google through Smile even though Zantel might be multihomed (unless the best path changes). I'd recommend testing from other providers such as SPICE-NET-TZ, TZ or simbanet-tz,TZ etc. [ Look above at the Seacom's downstream adjacent AS link I provided to find if you can use any of those carrier instead ] # whois -h whois.cymru.com 41.138.222.196 AS | IP | AS Name 327692 | 41.138.222.196 | SMILECOMMS,UG # whois -h whois.cymru.com 41.73.194.97 AS | IP | AS Name 36930 | 41.73.194.97 | Zantel-AS,TZ
- mhogomchungu 12y agoTanzanian here writing this from dar es salaam,Tanzania. I have never hear of this "smile" company so i looked them up and their prices[1] seem ridiculous. I use vodacom and i pay 20,000 shillings a month for unlimited internet.This company charges 17,500 a month for 1GB. vodacom,like other companies also have more options[2]. Why do you use this company? ps: 1USD is equivalent to about 1500 shillings so 20000 shillings is about 13USD [1] http://smile.co.tz/products-services/ http://smile.co.tz/products-services/ [2] https://www.vodacom.co.tz/internetservices/prepaid_packages/cheka-internet https://www.vodacom.co.tz/internetservices/prepaid_packages/...
- jordanthoms 12y agoLooks like smile has 4G LTE, so is probably significantly faster.
- craigds 12y agoHow fast is it? To my NZ ears these prices sound fantastic, as we usually pay about 5-6 times that for unlimited internet (if unlimited is even an option; it only is in certain urban areas). But presumably it's quite slow?
- mhogomchungu 12y agoi just updated by linux box using apt-get and it reported: "Fetched 47.0MB in 2m3s (381kB/s)". Thats 3Mbps. This kind of speeds happen from time to time but long downloads or streams are usually capped at around 300kbps( around 40kBps). The speed is decent enough during normal web surfing.
- xai3luGi 12y agoYou should come to the Debian conference in Cape Town next year :) https://jonathancarter.org/2015/02/13/debconf-2016-to-be-hosted-in-cape-town/ https://jonathancarter.org/2015/02/13/debconf-2016-to-be-hos...
- thebenedict 12y ago
- evanb 12y agoHI MIKE! I think you're the only other person I know who reads HN. Neat idea.
- caissy 12y agoI always thought that 8.8.8.8 was routed by anycast, thus pointing to the closest server.
- alimoeeny 12y agoI think you meant 8.8.4.4
- jakobegger 12y agoIf you work on anything web related and you have a Mac or an iOS device, I strongly encourage you to try the "Network Link Conditioner". It's a preference pane (on OS X) or a setting (on iOS) that allows you to simulate different types of networks. You can artificially limit bandwidth and transmission delay, simulate package loss and DNS delay. For me, it's become an essential tool for testing website & app performance.
- skrebbel 12y agoNice! Does anyone know whether something like this exists on Windows?
- goldins 12y agoGoogle Chrome Canary has network throttling functionality.
- tuacker 12y agoAs does plain Google Chrome, at least on OSX. Open Dev Tools and click the 2nd icon on top, next to the loupe, which looks like a mobile phone. From there you can specify a set of throttling speeds (offline, gprs, edge, 3G, DSL, Wifi)
- lstamour 12y agoFiddler or Network Emulator for Windows Toolkit perhaps. I'm sure there are other options though.
- wasyl 12y agoThere is crapify [1]. I remember seeing other tools as well, but can't find them at the moment. [1] https://www.npmjs.com/package/crapify https://www.npmjs.com/package/crapify
- scott_karana 12y agoI like "clumsy", which has a perfect animated GIF showing the app: http://jagt.github.io/clumsy/index.html http://jagt.github.io/clumsy/index.html
- 3327 12y agoSo how is it living there? Curios... I live in NYC, my brother is flying out to test out his micro solar chargers...Any insights?
- thebenedict 12y agoThe tech community is smallish but it's an easy place to live. Feel free to ping me with specific q's, or if your brother wants to grab a coffee if he passes through Dar. My email is my HN handle at gmail.
- leesalminen 12y agoVery cool! I work with the Anglican Diocese of Central Tanganyika. We host out of the U.S., and they are always complaining of page load time issues. Do you know of/recommend any local hosts?
- thebenedict 12y agoHi! I've heard good things about Habari Node[1], and Angania[2] is a startup working on Nairobi-based hosting. That said, I and most developers I know in the region host internationally. As others have mentioned latency is usually a bigger problem than bandwidth. Happy to take a look at your site if helpful (just add it to the form). [1] (http://www.habari.co.tz/ http://www.habari.co.tz/) [2] (https://angani.co/ https://angani.co/)
- asmosoinio 12y agoDepends on where your clients are in Africa -- if in the South then for example http://www.rsaweb.co.za/ http://www.rsaweb.co.za/ could be a good choice. Have had some VMs with them, no issues. Also Hetzner has servers in South Africa: http://www.hetzner.co.za/webhosting/buyersguide/hosting-locations http://www.hetzner.co.za/webhosting/buyersguide/hosting-loca...
- disordinary 12y agoNice service, thanks for offering it.
- Erwin 12y agoFor every other location BUT Africa you can get a speed test from this site: http://www.webpagetest.org/ http://www.webpagetest.org/ -- this also lets you different browsers and run an initial + repeated (with something cached) test.
- albemuth 12y agoThere's also the excellent Charles Proxy that serves as a mitm proxy and lets you throttle the connection among other things.
- jrlocke 12y agoAaaS - Africa as a service
- buyx 12y agoIt's a cool idea, but it is really just TaaS (Tanzania as a Service), or maybe South-east Africa as a service (decent submarine cable connections). From what I've heard bandwidth remains prohibitively expensive in places like Namibia and Botswana, while it is increasingly cheap in South Africa, where I was able to smoothly stream ''House of Cards'' from Netflix (via proxy) using an uncapped connection. TlDR: Africa is not a country
- justindocanto 12y agoYou may want to update what facebook has stored for your form's OG data as it has some old info/screenshots. What I see: http://imgur.com/2OPznGX http://imgur.com/2OPznGX Update here: https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/ https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/
- ghuntley 12y agoFrom personal experience whilst traveling through Tanzania & Kenya using a 4G modem from Safaricom the issue was/is latency. Bandwidth is plentiful but the latency is horrible which resulted in AJAX applications timing out before requests could be completed. Example of this was Gmail, the application would not even function in AJAX mode but switching to plain HTML mode, whilst it took forever, worked like a charm every time.
- kumarski 12y agoJe, mtu yeyote hapa kusema swahili?.......
- thebenedict 12y agoHapana, tu programmers mzungu hapa ;)
- henrygrew 12y agoMkundu wewe!
- mchiteri 12y agoNdio, tuko wengi hapa kaka! :)
- mhogomchungu 12y agokiswahili lugha yangu ya kwanza kama mtanzania niliyezaliwa na kukulia dar es salaam,tanzania. kuna watanzania wengi tu hapa HN na walijitokeza kwenye thread moja miezi michache iliyopita. Siwezi kupost link ya hiyo thread sababu siikumbuki link yenyewe na nahisi uvivu kuitafuta.
- thebenedict 12y agoA few folks showed up here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7837397 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7837397
- throwaway88509 12y agoYou don't have to go to Africa for network latency testing. Here's McDonald's Sunnyvale today: 64 bytes from 72.9.103.50: icmp_seq=32201 ttl=47 time=3894.012 ms 64 bytes from 72.9.103.50: icmp_seq=32202 ttl=47 time=4160.846 ms 64 bytes from 72.9.103.50: icmp_seq=32203 ttl=47 time=4438.250 ms 64 bytes from 72.9.103.50: icmp_seq=32205 ttl=47 time=4511.332 ms 64 bytes from 72.9.103.50: icmp_seq=32206 ttl=47 time=4877.157 ms 64 bytes from 72.9.103.50: icmp_seq=32207 ttl=47 time=4230.125 ms 64 bytes from 72.9.103.50: icmp_seq=32208 ttl=47 time=4140.820 ms 64 bytes from 72.9.103.50: icmp_seq=32209 ttl=47 time=3657.129 ms 64 bytes from 72.9.103.50: icmp_seq=32210 ttl=47 time=3668.067 ms 64 bytes from 72.9.103.50: icmp_seq=32211 ttl=47 time=3978.231 ms 64 bytes from 72.9.103.50: icmp_seq=32212 ttl=47 time=3639.352 ms 64 bytes from 72.9.103.50: icmp_seq=32213 ttl=47 time=3559.121 ms 64 bytes from 72.9.103.50: icmp_seq=32214 ttl=47 time=3362.324 ms