Network Drive Testing

Every now and then I see in computer magazines or tech websites some network speed measurements (including my blog). Often, however, they are based on single measurement experience or maybe based on using a notebook in a few areas in the network. While this might be good for telling the performance in those places it doesn't really capture the overall capabilities of the networks. For this, so called drive tests are required and for comparisons between different networks, measurements must be performed in the different networks simultaneously. That's quite a challenge but the resulting data is well worth it. Here's a link to a recent article in a the German computer magazine "Chip" that has made an extensive test of the German networks. Google can help to translate the pages for those non-German speakers of you. Highly recommended for the background information and the interesting pictures of the measurement equipment and the results. If you know of similar tests having been published in other countries, please let me know!

Comments

[Dimitris Mavrakis]

Hi Martin,
I have done such measurement campaigns in Portugal, Great Britain, France, Netherlands, Egype and Germany on behalf of a large operator.
Hours and hours of fun in the car!
You are right to say that the results are very comprehensive and give you a very good idea of propagation characteristics (which may be different for each country or even city).