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.

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eddythompson80 7 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.

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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.

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dmurray 34 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.

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fragmede 25 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 5 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I meant, acquire the speedtest.net domain and point it to servers inside Netflix' farm.

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fragmede 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

http://speed.cloudflare.com is a bit harder to argue with though.

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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.

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is_true 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

They serve so many sites that they are probably the best test there's now.

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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.

	▲	TheScaryOne 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		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.
	▲	andylynch an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Sure it does. Just tap ‘More Info’ to show them

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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.)