| ▲ | progforlyfe 5 hours ago |
| that's nuts, unless I'm missing something, it doesn't seem like those products are that mind blowingly complex... wow. Makes we want to try building my own for the hell of it. Downdetector in fact just seems to be a website catalog with essentially a guestbook and hit counter... |
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| ▲ | eddythompson80 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| Of course they are not complex. They do have a network effect though. If you go to your local ISP and say “hey, my 500mbps plan is only doing 100mbps on Speedtest.net”, they’ll “fix it” (usually by working with Ookla to put an edge endpoint on their network) If you tell the “hey frankyspeeddetect.com isn’t doing my 500mbps” they’ll tell you to it’s an issue with that random website. ISPs and services reach out to Ookla to onboard with them because they have a network effect/mindshare of whatever you wanna call it |
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| ▲ | thayne 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | When I used a major cable ISP, often my connection seemed slow, so I'd go to speedtest.com. The speedtest would be fine... and then I would magically have faster network performance again. It happened enough times that I'm suspicious the ISP had some way to detect if you run a speedtest, and then prioritized traffic to that customer. | | |
| ▲ | eddythompson80 9 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | > It happened enough times that I'm suspicious the ISP had some way to detect if you run a speedtest, and then prioritized traffic to that customer. ISPs definitely know when you run a speedtest.net test. 90% of the time, the data for that comes from boxes/services they host themselves. It’s not exactly hidden either. It’s a typical program any ISP can sign up for and you can easily see the destination the test is running against. I won’t be surprised if some have some logic to prioritize particular subscribers plan once they have detected a test from them. They probably view it as a “customer support calls reduction” feature. | |
| ▲ | simmonmt 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | This was one of the reasons given, at the time, for why Netflix created fast.com. It's served by the same infra that does their streaming, and is thus difficult for isps to game. That is, it'd be hard for them to do some hack to make fast.com numbers without also benefiting Netflix streaming performance in the bargain. | | |
| ▲ | dmurray 35 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Actually I thought Netflix had already acquired Ookla / speedtest.com, so I was surprised to see this headline. But it looks like this was just the Mandela effect. That said, why didn't Netflix acquire the market leader in this space? Creating their own seems way less useful, since network effects are the whole point. | | |
| ▲ | fragmede 27 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Because Netflix doesn't care what your connection to speedtest.net is, they care what your connection to your closest Netflix server box is. A while back, Comcast/your last-mile ISP was throttling traffic to Netflix to get Netflix to pay them. So while Netflix's box had plenty of bandwidth to their ISP, your ISP wasn't using it, intentionally. Fast.com was their response to that, so you could blame your ISP and not Netflix for being slow. | | |
| ▲ | dmurray 7 minutes ago | parent [-] | | I meant, acquire the speedtest.net domain and point it to servers inside Netflix' farm. |
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| ▲ | fragmede 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | http://speed.cloudflare.com is a bit harder to argue with though. | | |
| ▲ | cheema33 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I had not heard of http://speed.cloudflare.com either. I just tried it and I did not get accurate numbers. wifiman.com, from Ubiquiti/Unifi team does provide more accurate numbers. fast.com numbers are pretty accurate as well. | | |
| ▲ | is_true 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | They serve so many sites that they are probably the best test there's now. | |
| ▲ | amelius 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I'm a huge fan of https://speed.cloudflare.com/ and you'll have to come with better evidence. Also fast.com doesn't even give upload speed and latency. | | |
| ▲ | andylynch an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Sure it does. Just tap ‘More Info’ to show them | |
| ▲ | TheScaryOne 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | That's not the point of fast.com Fast is a one click solution to finding out your download speed from Netflix. Latency doesn't matter, nor does upload. |
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| ▲ | fragmede 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > I did not get accurate numbers. That's why speedtest.net is a great purchase for Accenture. Of course Cloudflare's speed test is accurate: it's a test of how fast your connection is to their network. No more, no less. That their network doesn't have the same PoPs means it'll have different numbers than Ookla's test, your ISPs advertised numbers, Netflix's test, and any other speed test. But for people that don't see the Internet as a pile of different interconnected networks, the conclusion that a particular test is inaccurate is a win for Accenture. |
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| ▲ | tverbeure 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | The difference is that until now I had never heard of speed.cloudflare.com before. (I know about fast.com though.) |
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| ▲ | Seattle3503 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The valuation must be outside of the tech. Are there relationships or contracts Accenture is getting access to? |
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| ▲ | sowbug 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| thefacebook.com was developed in a few days, too. The value was never in the code. |
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| ▲ | kingleopold 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| dont miss it, its almost all about users and revenue not how complex or simple product is. |
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| ▲ | rozenmd 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| the best part is Downdetector is inaccurate as hell - if AWS is genuinely down, folks get curious and search other providers, causing Downdetector to mark them as down too |
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| ▲ | fontain 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Ookla has huge amounts of data, speedtest’s software is integrated into networks and used by hundreds of millions of users, they have the most comprehensive information about internet connections. You can recreate the software but you can’t recreate the data without decades of integration into what seems like every network. https://www.ookla.com/ You can see an overview of the data they collect and sell on the corporate website |
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| ▲ | guessbest 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| That's a lot of money just for network topography, but may someone let them in and it has a whole map of an otherwise hidden or inaccessible network. |
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| ▲ | maccard 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| You’re not paying for the tech, you’re paying for the name and the users. Speedyest claims 40m unique users per month. |
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| ▲ | kobalsky 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| speedtest has a lot of volunteers hosting local servers, which you need to do a good last mile speed test. that capilarity is not something you can achieve overnight. |
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| ▲ | dyauspitr 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| The valuation is the name recognition and that that’s where people go to do those things |
