I have a question: The total amount work to verify N 1MB blocks is about the same as single N-MB block, right? For example, 32 1MB blocks take about the same amount of work to verify as a single 32MB block, right? Just please ignore the live delivery of blocks for the moment. Or is there some advantage to large blocks where less headers have to be processed. Imagine a full node was off the air for a day or two and is just trying to catch up as fast as possible. What block size facilitates that best?
a much easier way. to get an initial bases number to then compare is to start from scratch. and time how long it takes to resync from 0 to the latest block
..then do the maths
EG
someone pointed out to lauda that at a 1mb internet connection
http://bitcoinstats.com/irc/bitcoin-dev/logs/2016/01/17#l1453064029.0it would take 12 days to resync and validate 400,000 blocks
so basing it on a very slow connection is a good bases of capability
which is basically 400,000 /12 /24/ 60 = 0.39 blocks a minute. so lets call that 1 block in under 3 minutes.
that is the basic total propogation time including download time using a 1mb connection speed.
though it would be useful to work out how long it takes to validate the data without the connection speed hindering it.
and also know the total propogation time at a varying amount of internet speeds too
so i wish you luck with your investigations and i hope your results give some conclusive results