[clue-tech] DSL providers

[Mike Staver]

> The basic benefit to interleaving is that it protects against
> transmission errors and provides a more reliable connection by breaking
> up and "mixing" several packets together before transmitting so that if
> one packet gets corrupted, the remaining packets will still contain
> enough information to recreate the corrupted packet without needing to
> have data resent.  Unfortunately the mixing/de-mixing process nearly
> doubles the latency of each packet.  If you have a poor physical
> connection that's prone to errors then interleaving will be a good thing
> as it will save packets from having to be constantly retransmitted.  If
> your physical connection is good though, then it's just adding useless
> latency.  I'm assuming the reason Qwest turns this on by default is
> simple economics; most folks don't have a clue or care about latency so
> it's not worth their time to do line testing.  In my case, turning off
> interleaving dropped my average ping time from 70-80ms down to 35-45ms.
> 

Wow, that seems like a great incentive to turn it off if your connection 
is solid. I'll go ahead and call Qwest today and try having it turned 
off for my line since I think I have a pretty solid connection.  I guess 
if it doesn't help much with latency, then I'll have them turn it back 
on. I have a Cisco 678 - would that have to be rebooted after Qwest 
makes the change?

-- 

                                 -Mike Staver
                                  staver at fimble.com
                                  http://www.fimble.com