Mobile access bandwidth in practice: Measurement, analysis, and implications

Xinlei Yang; Hao Lin; Zhenhua Li; Feng Qian; Xingyao Li; Zhiming He; Xudong Wu; Xianlong Wang; Yunhao Liu; Zhi Liao; Daqiang Hu; Tianyin Xu

doi:10.1145/3544216.3544237

Mobile access bandwidth in practice: Measurement, analysis, and implications

Xinlei Yang, Hao Lin, Zhenhua Li, Feng Qian, Xingyao Li, Zhiming He, Xudong Wu, Xianlong Wang, Yunhao Liu, Zhi Liao, Daqiang Hu, Tianyin Xu

Computer Science and Engineering

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

13 Scopus citations

Abstract

Recent advances in mobile technologies such as 5G and WiFi 6E do not seem to deliver the promised mobile access bandwidth. To effectively characterize mobile access bandwidth in the wild, we work with a major commercial mobile bandwidth testing app to analyze mobile access bandwidths of 3.54M end users in China, based on fine-grained measurement and diagnostic information. Our analysis presents a surprising and frustrating fact-in the past two years, the average WiFi bandwidth remains largely unchanged, while the average 4G/5G bandwidth decreases remarkably. Our analysis further reveals the root causes-The bottlenecks in the underlying infrastructure (e.g., devices and wired Internet access) and side effects of aggressively migrating radio resources from 4G to 5G-with implications on closing the technology gaps. Additionally, our analysis provides insights on building ultra-fast, ultra-light bandwidth testing services (BTSes) at scale. Our new design dramatically reduces the test time of the commercial BTS from 10 seconds to 1 second on average, with a 15× reduction on the backend cost.

Original language	English (US)
Title of host publication	SIGCOMM 2022 - Proceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM 2022 Conference
Publisher	Association for Computing Machinery, Inc
Pages	114-128
Number of pages	15
ISBN (Electronic)	9781450394208
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1145/3544216.3544237
State	Published - Aug 22 2022
Event	2022 Conference of the ACM Special Interest Group on Data Communication, SIGCOMM 2022 - Amsterdam, Netherlands Duration: Aug 22 2022 → Aug 26 2022

Publication series

Name	SIGCOMM 2022 - Proceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM 2022 Conference

Conference

Conference	2022 Conference of the ACM Special Interest Group on Data Communication, SIGCOMM 2022
Country/Territory	Netherlands
City	Amsterdam
Period	8/22/22 → 8/26/22

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
We appreciate Li Ma and Guangbiao Liu for their help in data collection and system deployment. We sincerely thank our shepherd Jia Wang and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable feedbacks and constructive suggestions. We also appreciate Jiaxing Qiu, Wei Liu, Yang Li, and Jianwei Zheng for their help in improving the presentation of this paper. This work is supported in part by the National Key R&D Program of China under grant 2021YFB2900100, the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) under grant 61902211, and Microsoft Research Asia.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Owner/Author.

Keywords

LTE/5G network
access bandwidth
bandwidth testing
mobile network
wifi network

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Access

10.1145/3544216.3544237

OpenUrl availability

Full text

Cite this

Yang, X., Lin, H., Li, Z., Qian, F., Li, X., He, Z., Wu, X., Wang, X., Liu, Y., Liao, Z., Hu, D., & Xu, T. (2022). Mobile access bandwidth in practice: Measurement, analysis, and implications. In SIGCOMM 2022 - Proceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM 2022 Conference (pp. 114-128). (SIGCOMM 2022 - Proceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM 2022 Conference). Association for Computing Machinery, Inc. https://doi.org/10.1145/3544216.3544237

Mobile access bandwidth in practice: Measurement, analysis, and implications. / Yang, Xinlei; Lin, Hao; Li, Zhenhua et al.
SIGCOMM 2022 - Proceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM 2022 Conference. Association for Computing Machinery, Inc, 2022. p. 114-128 (SIGCOMM 2022 - Proceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM 2022 Conference).

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

Yang, X, Lin, H, Li, Z, Qian, F, Li, X, He, Z, Wu, X, Wang, X, Liu, Y, Liao, Z, Hu, D & Xu, T 2022, Mobile access bandwidth in practice: Measurement, analysis, and implications. in SIGCOMM 2022 - Proceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM 2022 Conference. SIGCOMM 2022 - Proceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM 2022 Conference, Association for Computing Machinery, Inc, pp. 114-128, 2022 Conference of the ACM Special Interest Group on Data Communication, SIGCOMM 2022, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 8/22/22. https://doi.org/10.1145/3544216.3544237

@inproceedings{68aa8132935e4c03bc80724297ee8f34,

title = "Mobile access bandwidth in practice: Measurement, analysis, and implications",

abstract = "Recent advances in mobile technologies such as 5G and WiFi 6E do not seem to deliver the promised mobile access bandwidth. To effectively characterize mobile access bandwidth in the wild, we work with a major commercial mobile bandwidth testing app to analyze mobile access bandwidths of 3.54M end users in China, based on fine-grained measurement and diagnostic information. Our analysis presents a surprising and frustrating fact-in the past two years, the average WiFi bandwidth remains largely unchanged, while the average 4G/5G bandwidth decreases remarkably. Our analysis further reveals the root causes-The bottlenecks in the underlying infrastructure (e.g., devices and wired Internet access) and side effects of aggressively migrating radio resources from 4G to 5G-with implications on closing the technology gaps. Additionally, our analysis provides insights on building ultra-fast, ultra-light bandwidth testing services (BTSes) at scale. Our new design dramatically reduces the test time of the commercial BTS from 10 seconds to 1 second on average, with a 15× reduction on the backend cost.",

keywords = "LTE/5G network, access bandwidth, bandwidth testing, mobile network, wifi network",

author = "Xinlei Yang and Hao Lin and Zhenhua Li and Feng Qian and Xingyao Li and Zhiming He and Xudong Wu and Xianlong Wang and Yunhao Liu and Zhi Liao and Daqiang Hu and Tianyin Xu",

note = "Funding Information: We appreciate Li Ma and Guangbiao Liu for their help in data collection and system deployment. We sincerely thank our shepherd Jia Wang and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable feedbacks and constructive suggestions. We also appreciate Jiaxing Qiu, Wei Liu, Yang Li, and Jianwei Zheng for their help in improving the presentation of this paper. This work is supported in part by the National Key R&D Program of China under grant 2021YFB2900100, the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) under grant 61902211, and Microsoft Research Asia. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2022 Owner/Author.; 2022 Conference of the ACM Special Interest Group on Data Communication, SIGCOMM 2022 ; Conference date: 22-08-2022 Through 26-08-2022",

year = "2022",

month = aug,

day = "22",

doi = "10.1145/3544216.3544237",

language = "English (US)",

series = "SIGCOMM 2022 - Proceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM 2022 Conference",

publisher = "Association for Computing Machinery, Inc",

pages = "114--128",

booktitle = "SIGCOMM 2022 - Proceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM 2022 Conference",

}

TY - GEN

T1 - Mobile access bandwidth in practice

T2 - 2022 Conference of the ACM Special Interest Group on Data Communication, SIGCOMM 2022

AU - Yang, Xinlei

AU - Lin, Hao

AU - Li, Zhenhua

AU - Qian, Feng

AU - Li, Xingyao

AU - He, Zhiming

AU - Wu, Xudong

AU - Wang, Xianlong

AU - Liu, Yunhao

AU - Liao, Zhi

AU - Hu, Daqiang

AU - Xu, Tianyin

N1 - Funding Information: We appreciate Li Ma and Guangbiao Liu for their help in data collection and system deployment. We sincerely thank our shepherd Jia Wang and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable feedbacks and constructive suggestions. We also appreciate Jiaxing Qiu, Wei Liu, Yang Li, and Jianwei Zheng for their help in improving the presentation of this paper. This work is supported in part by the National Key R&D Program of China under grant 2021YFB2900100, the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) under grant 61902211, and Microsoft Research Asia. Publisher Copyright: © 2022 Owner/Author.

PY - 2022/8/22

Y1 - 2022/8/22

N2 - Recent advances in mobile technologies such as 5G and WiFi 6E do not seem to deliver the promised mobile access bandwidth. To effectively characterize mobile access bandwidth in the wild, we work with a major commercial mobile bandwidth testing app to analyze mobile access bandwidths of 3.54M end users in China, based on fine-grained measurement and diagnostic information. Our analysis presents a surprising and frustrating fact-in the past two years, the average WiFi bandwidth remains largely unchanged, while the average 4G/5G bandwidth decreases remarkably. Our analysis further reveals the root causes-The bottlenecks in the underlying infrastructure (e.g., devices and wired Internet access) and side effects of aggressively migrating radio resources from 4G to 5G-with implications on closing the technology gaps. Additionally, our analysis provides insights on building ultra-fast, ultra-light bandwidth testing services (BTSes) at scale. Our new design dramatically reduces the test time of the commercial BTS from 10 seconds to 1 second on average, with a 15× reduction on the backend cost.

AB - Recent advances in mobile technologies such as 5G and WiFi 6E do not seem to deliver the promised mobile access bandwidth. To effectively characterize mobile access bandwidth in the wild, we work with a major commercial mobile bandwidth testing app to analyze mobile access bandwidths of 3.54M end users in China, based on fine-grained measurement and diagnostic information. Our analysis presents a surprising and frustrating fact-in the past two years, the average WiFi bandwidth remains largely unchanged, while the average 4G/5G bandwidth decreases remarkably. Our analysis further reveals the root causes-The bottlenecks in the underlying infrastructure (e.g., devices and wired Internet access) and side effects of aggressively migrating radio resources from 4G to 5G-with implications on closing the technology gaps. Additionally, our analysis provides insights on building ultra-fast, ultra-light bandwidth testing services (BTSes) at scale. Our new design dramatically reduces the test time of the commercial BTS from 10 seconds to 1 second on average, with a 15× reduction on the backend cost.

KW - LTE/5G network

KW - access bandwidth

KW - bandwidth testing

KW - mobile network

KW - wifi network

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85138028973&partnerID=8YFLogxK

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85138028973&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1145/3544216.3544237

DO - 10.1145/3544216.3544237

M3 - Conference contribution

AN - SCOPUS:85138028973

T3 - SIGCOMM 2022 - Proceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM 2022 Conference

SP - 114

EP - 128

BT - SIGCOMM 2022 - Proceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM 2022 Conference

PB - Association for Computing Machinery, Inc

Y2 - 22 August 2022 through 26 August 2022

ER -

Mobile access bandwidth in practice: Measurement, analysis, and implications

Abstract

Publication series

Conference

Bibliographical note

Keywords

UN SDGs

Access

OpenUrl availability

Other files and links

Fingerprint

Cite this