TrueNet is a New Zealand company that measures actual internet speeds from the premise to both local and international addresses. Pacific Fibre asked them to pull together from their data a chart showing the difference between local and international traffic speeds at peak times. (If there is an Australian company offering this service then please get in touch)

The left hand column reflects the speed from residences to a domestic NZ address. It’s this statistic (perhaps averaged out over the day, and measured from the server rather than the premise) that local and international surveys report when comparing Australia and New Zealand to the rest of the world. Akamai, Net Index, and Cisco for example, report on speeds from the premises to a local (inside NZ or Australia) server.

The right hand side column shows the effective speed from NZ premises to a server in Dallas, and thus includes the international link.

If we believe industry estimates over 80%+ of traffic to the home comes from offshore. Thus from the end user perspective the effective speed of the internet is generally much closer to the bar on the right hand side.

In the USA the left hand and right hand columns are one – as the vast majority of traffic is domestic. Similarly in Japan, Korea and, I take it, European countries like France – where the language dictates that most of the traffic is domestic. However when we compare average US speeds to speeds in Australia and New Zealand then the only fair way to do so is to use a measure of effective speed. That means we should be much lower in the international rankings, and thus should sound alarm bells.