For Internet connection I use most times the GPRS option of my
cellphone, phone connected to the laptop by Bluetooth. Most times that
service appears to be extremely slow. The official tariff for this
service states a maximum latency of 100ms for the national section and
an additional 200ms on the international section. Packet loss on the
national section should be less than 10%, on the international section
less than 5%. As one of the URL's to use they state google.com.

When I tried to measure the ping-times to google on my laptop I got to
much higher >average< latency values of about 580ms or more, and
sometimes a loss rate of 50% when the time-out is set to 500ms,
interval 1 sec, buffer size 32 bits. The signal strength on the
cellphone was shown as excellent. As tool to measure I use
PingTestEasy 3.32.

Now my question is, if I commited some systematic error in the way I
measure:
-- Do I need to take in consideration additonal time for transmission
and processing of Bluetooth?
-- Which time-out setting should I use?
-- In which interval should I set the pinging: every second, or five,
or more?
-- Any other variables that I forgot?

I know that this is slightly OT. But I also know that there are many
excellent professionals reading here. So please excuse.

Werner

Oh, I forgot:
-- How much does the distance between the transmission tower and my
cellphone matter?

W.