| ▲ | thayne 4 hours ago | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
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 8 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. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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