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Engineering for Slow Internet

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Re: Engineering for Slow Internet

#171

Post by rpastuszak »

padolsey wrote: post #43

A lot of this resonates. I'm not in Antartica, I'm in Beijing, but still struggle with the internet. Being behind the great firewall means using creative approaches. VPNs only sometimes work, and each leaves a signature that the firewall's hueristics and ML can eventually catch onto. Even state-mandated ones are 'gently' limited at times of political sensitivity. It all ends up meaning that, even if I get a connectio…

I lived in Shoreditch for 7 years and most of my flats had almost 3G internet speeds. The last one had windows that incidentally acted like a faraday cage.

I always test my projects with throttled bandwidth, largely because (just like with a11y) following good practices results in better UX for all users, not just those with poor connectivity.

Edit: Another often missed opportunity is building SPAs as offline-first.

Re: Engineering for Slow Internet

#172

Post by jhonkola »

sitkack wrote: post #126
jiggawatts wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't naive, and isn't dismissive. The problem is the CCP. The only fix is for the people to rise up against them. This doesn't even have to be violent. Most of the former Soviet Block governments fell without any bloodshed. What's the alternative? Wait for Xi to "make his mark on history" in the same way that Putin is doing in Ukraine because it's "naive and dismissive" to even talk about unseating him?

> Most of the former Soviet Block governments fell without any bloodshed. That was Gorbachev. Most leaders of any country would roll tanks.

Gorbachev sent the tanks rolling in Lithuania (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_Events).

Re: Engineering for Slow Internet

#173

Post by RetroTechie »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #45
Tepix wrote: post #26

I had a similar experience as the author on a boat in the south pacific. Starlink was available but often wasn't used because of its high power usage (60+ watts). So we got local SIM cards instead which provided 4G internet in some locations and EDGE (2G) in others. EDGE by itself isn't too bad on paper - you get a couple dozen kilobits per second. In reality, it was much worse. I ran into apps with short timeouts th…

The South Pacific should be very sunny. I guess that you didn't have enough solar panels to provide 60+ watts. I am genuinely surprised. And "local SIM cards" implies that you set foot on (is)lands to buy said SIM cards. Where did you only get 2G in the 2020s? I cannot believe any of this is still left in the South Pacific.

> Where did you only get 2G in the 2020s?

My previous smartphone supported 4G/3G/Edge, but for some reason the 4G didn't work. At all, ever, anywhere (not a provider/subscription or OS settings issue, and WiFi was fine).

In my country 3G was turned off a while ago to free up spectrum. So it fell back to Edge all the time.

That phone died recently. I'm temporarily using an older phone which also supports 4G/3G/Edge, and where the 4G bit works. Except... in many places where I hang out (rural / countryside) 4G coverage is spotty or non-existant. So it also falls back to Edge most of the time.

Just the other day (while on WiFi) I installed Dolphin as a lightweight browser alternative. Out in the countryside, it doesn't work ("no connection"), even though Firefox works fine there.

Apps won't download unless on WiFi. Not even if you're patient: downloads break somewhere, don't resume properly, or what's downloaded doesn't install because the download was corrupted. None of these issues over WiFi. Same with some websites: roundtrips take too long, server drops the connection, images don't load, etc etc.

Bottom line: app developers or online services don't (seem to) care about slow connections.

But here's the thing: for the average person in this world, fast mobile connections are still the exception, not the norm. Big city / developed country / 4G or 5G base stations 'everywhere' doesn't apply to a large % of the world's population (who do own smartphones these days, even if low-spec ones).

Not that some low-tier mobile plans also cap connection speeds. Read: slow connection even if there's 4G/5G coverage. There's a reason internet cafe's are still a thing around the world.

Re: Engineering for Slow Internet

#174

Post by amelius »

I have a question about this. I have multiple instances of curl running in different terminals, all using a single slow internet connection.

How can I give priority to one of these instances?

Re: Engineering for Slow Internet

#175

Post by Sesse__ »

daveoc64 wrote: post #154
nicbou wrote: post #101

I travel a lot. Slow internet is pretty common. Also, right now my mobile data ran out and I'm capped at 8 kbps. Websites that are Just Text On A Page should load fast, but many don't. Hacker News is blazing fast, but Google's API docs never load. The worst problem is that most UIs fail to account for slow requests. Buttons feel broken. Things that really shouldn't need megabytes of data to load still take minutes to…

>Websites that are Just Text On A Page should load fast, but many don't. Hacker News is blazing fast, but Google's API docs never load. Things aren't always that simple. I'm in the UK, and my ping time to news.ycombinator.com is 147ms - presumably because it's not using a CDN and is hosted in the USA. cloud.google.com on the other hand has an 8ms ping time. So yes, Hacker News is a simple, low-JS page - but there can…

HN loads quickly for me _despite_ the 147 ms. I guess partially because it doesn't need 20 roundtrips to sent useful content to me.

At some point, I wrote a webapp (with one specific, limited function, of course) and optimized it to the point where loading it required one 27 kB request. And then turned up the cwnd somewhat, so that it could load in a single RTT :-) Doesn't really matter if you're in Australia then, really.

Re: Engineering for Slow Internet

#176

Post by Nevolihs »

chipdart wrote: post #29
Tepix wrote: post #26

I had a similar experience as the author on a boat in the south pacific. Starlink was available but often wasn't used because of its high power usage (60+ watts). So we got local SIM cards instead which provided 4G internet in some locations and EDGE (2G) in others. EDGE by itself isn't too bad on paper - you get a couple dozen kilobits per second. In reality, it was much worse. I ran into apps with short timeouts th…

> Low bandwith, high latency connections need to be part of the regular testing of software. One size does not fit all. It would be a waste of time and effort to architect (or redesign) an app just because a residual subset of potential users might find themselves on a boat in the middle of the Pacific. Let's keep things in perspective: some projects even skip testing WebApps on more than one browser because they dee…

Websites regularly break because I don't have perfect network coverage on my phone every single day. In a lot of places, I don't even have decent reception. This in Germany in and around a major city.

Why do you think this only applies to people on a boat?

Re: Engineering for Slow Internet

#177

Post by CM30 »

rpastuszak wrote: post #171
padolsey wrote: post #43

A lot of this resonates. I'm not in Antartica, I'm in Beijing, but still struggle with the internet. Being behind the great firewall means using creative approaches. VPNs only sometimes work, and each leaves a signature that the firewall's hueristics and ML can eventually catch onto. Even state-mandated ones are 'gently' limited at times of political sensitivity. It all ends up meaning that, even if I get a connectio…

I lived in Shoreditch for 7 years and most of my flats had almost 3G internet speeds. The last one had windows that incidentally acted like a faraday cage. I always test my projects with throttled bandwidth, largely because (just like with a11y) following good practices results in better UX for all users, not just those with poor connectivity. Edit: Another often missed opportunity is building SPAs as offline-first.

Oh, London is notorious for having... questionable internet speeds in certain areas. It's good if you live in a new build flat/work in a recently constructed office building or you own your own home in a place OpenReach have gotten to yet, but if you live in an apartment building/work in an office building more than 5 or so years old?

Yeah, there's a decent chance you'll be stuck with crappy internet as a result. I still remember quite a few of my employers getting frustrated that fibre internet wasn't available for the building they were renting office space in, despite them running a tech company that really needed a good internet connection.

Re: Engineering for Slow Internet

#178

Post by Nevolihs »

padolsey wrote: post #43

A lot of this resonates. I'm not in Antartica, I'm in Beijing, but still struggle with the internet. Being behind the great firewall means using creative approaches. VPNs only sometimes work, and each leaves a signature that the firewall's hueristics and ML can eventually catch onto. Even state-mandated ones are 'gently' limited at times of political sensitivity. It all ends up meaning that, even if I get a connectio…

Tbh, developers just need to test their site with existing tools or just try leaving the office. My cellular data reception in Germany in a major city sucks in a lot of spots. I experience sites not loading or breaking every single day.

Re: Engineering for Slow Internet

#179

Post by rsynnott »

themoonisachees wrote: post #79
drozycki wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get 400 Mbps down standing at the door of that same diner. My understanding is that 4G bands are repurposed for 5G in rough proportion to the usage of 4G vs 5G devices at that tower, plus there’s some way to use a band for both. In any case I was having these indoor performance issues back in 2019. I’m pretty sure it’s an Intel issue, and any Qualcomm modem would be fine.

I see this in my french city, there's a particular spot on my commute where my phone (mediatek) will report 2 bars of 5G but speeds will actually be around 3G. I've also noticed other people on the tram having their videos buffer at that spot, so it's not just me. The carriers do not care, of course. I think there's just some of these areas where operational conditions make the towers break in some specific way.

I mean, they're not breaking, they're just overloaded. Solution is generally to add more towers, but that's expensive.

Re: Engineering for Slow Internet

#180

Post by ezequiel-garzon »

mwcampbell wrote: post #122
bayindirh wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However, getting 6.4KB of data (just tested on my blog) or 60KB of data (a git.sr.ht repository with a README.md and a PNG) is way better than getting 20MB of frameworks in the first place.

False dichotomy, with what is likely extreme hyperbole on the JS side. Are there actual sites that ship 20 MB, or even 5 MB or more, of frameworks? One can fit a lot of useful functionality in 100 KB or less of JS< especially minified and gzipped.

I agree with adding very little JavaScript, say 1kB https://instant.page/ to make it snappier.
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