[Qatar-pm] Does the Qtel filter affect web speed?

[Nigel Gourlay]

I'm ambivalent about posting this mail, but the figures probably don't lie.

The Qtel filter acts as both a censor and as a webcache. At a recent
Qatar GNU Linux User Group meeting, I suggested it would be
interesting to see how the filter affected download speeds.

Tested using 1024kbps ADSL, contacting a US-located webserver bound to
ports 80 and 92. Port 80 traffic is intercepted by Qtel's filter. Port
92 traffic is ignore by Qtel.

Static requests are HTTP GET requests for zero-byte and 100KB binary
files. The responses should be cacheable by a webcache.

Dynamic requests are HTTP GET requests to randomly generated URLs. The
responses should not be cacheable.

ICMP ping
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 277.523/280.222/286.745/1.863 ms

Zero-byte static requests
Port 80: min/avg/max/stddev 60.673/68.117/198.970/18.626 ms
Port 92: min/avg/max/stddev 581.702/598.875/1497.643/90.853 ms

100KB static requests
Port 80: min/avg/max/stddev 1179.798/1446.170/1791.680/113.822 ms
Port 92: min/avg/max/stddev 3745.255/4205.562/6069.717/563.729 ms

Zero-byte dynamic requests
Port 80: min/avg/max/stddev 323.830/382.158/1627.435/173.142 ms
Port 92: min/avg/max/stddev 584.414/626.839/1716.627/130.719 ms

100KB dynamic requests
Port 80: min/avg/max/stddev 1882.814/1914.729/2000.469/28.852 ms
Port 92: min/avg/max/stddev 2450.092/2491.407/2530.966/17.465 ms


Qtel's filter improves speeds for both static and dynamic requests.

--nigel