On the Impact of Operative Systems Choice in End-User Bandwidth Evaluation: Testing and Analysis in a Metro-Access Network

In this work, we apply an accredited standard technique for end-user bandwidth evaluation in an ADSL access scenario and show that the choice of operating system has a critical impact on performances. In particular, our end-to-end File Transfer Protocol (FTP)-based bandwidth measurements point out the strong impact of TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) implementation. As a consequence, a testing scenario needs to be described not only according to the physical parameters, but also paying attention to software implementation factors that could affect the testing results.