I use Firebug for Firefox to achieve same. Being able to plot the load times for websites and for more specifically, the individual items of content within the site, is enough to satisfy many people, especially when you point out that the 3.5meg flash animation in the middle of the page really does need several seconds to load, but that the download time for it was reasonable.

The other tool i've used is iperf, this obviously requires you to have a well connected endpoint with appropriate access (often requires root?) but can again be used to verify that the bits of the network under your sphere of influence are performing as expected.

Mark.

On 28/02/12 09:53, Leith Bade wrote:

Have you looked at the timeline feature hidden in Chrome's developer tools?

It is designed to allow web developers to tune the loading speed of their web pages but may provide a reliable way to measure request latency and load time.

Thanks,
Leith Bade
leith@leithalweapon.geek.nz

On 28 February 2012 07:06, Glen Eustace <geustace@godzone.net.nz> wrote:

In my role at Massey University, I am often asked to investigate complaints from our Help Desk of a 'the Internet is slow' nature. We are finding this increasingly difficult to do in any meaningful way. Massey is peered at WIX, PNIX and APE we have two Internet peers and have multiple paths to them and they both have multiple upstream providers.

Simply ping testing for latency/connectivity doesn't really provide much of an insight, traceroute tells us where outbound packets went and which hops are 'slow' but doesn't indicate the return path. Most of our customers equate Website == Internet, so the responsiveness of a destination seems to also be an important consideration.

I am assuming that most ISPs have Help Desk calls of a similar nature. How does one substantiate or refute such complaints, pro-actively identify 'slowness/congestion' ? Evidence collected by 'tools' needs to be defensible when responding to our 'customers'.

Any pointers to how I can do this better would be appreciated.

Glen
Massey University.
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