查看文章

Cellular and 802.11 WiFi are compelling options for mobile Internet connectivity. The goal of our work is to understand the performance afforded by each of these technologies in diverse environments and use conditions. In this paper, we compare and contrast cellular and WiFi performance using crowd-sourced data from Speedtest.net. Our study considers spatio-temporal performance (upload/download throughput and latency) using over 3 million user-initiated tests from iOS and Android apps in 15 different metro areas collected over a 15 week period. Our basic performance comparisons show that (i) WiFi provides better absolute download/upload throughput, and a higher degree of consistency in performance; (ii) WiFi networks generally deliver lower absolute latency, but the consistency in latency is often better with cellular access; (iii) throughput and latency vary widely depending on the particular access type …