FCC releases Internet speed test tool

Scott Berkman scott at sberkman.net
Fri Mar 12 16:26:17 UTC 2010


So have other people noticed that the Ookla/Speedtest.net/Speakeasy
Bandwidth test often comes up VERY short on upload bandwidth results for
anything other than residential-grade asymmetrical services?

We often get complaints from customers saying "I'm not getting the upload
bandwidth I'm paying for", and when we ask what they are using to determine
this, the answer is almost always either Speakeasy or Speedtest.net.

We certainly don't depend on or recommend these sites to customers (we have
our own internal tools and usually recommend FTP or iperf), but everyone who
deems themselves semi-knowledgeable seems to find their way there anyway.
Do these sites simply not have the downstream bandwidth to handle the upload
tests?  If that’s the case I'd really like to see the admins add a
disclaimer of some form directly to the site.

	Thanks,

-Scott

-----Original Message-----
From: Robert Mathews (OSIA) [mailto:mathews at hawaii.edu] 
Sent: Friday, March 12, 2010 10:32 AM
To: North American Network Operators Group
Subject: Re: FCC releases Internet speed test tool

Joe Greco wrote:
> Correction: it _requires_ Java. It _asks_ for your address. It seems
> like it'd work fine if you gave it your neighbor's address. :-)
>
> I noted that I got wildly varying numbers on a laptop and an iPhone (there
> is also an iPhone app) and the iPhone app doesn't ask for an address. Both
> on the same wifi, and the numbers were off by a lot.
>
> ... JG

INSTEAD of using the FCC provided app, one 'could' always use OOKLA and
M-LAB directly.
The following links may prove to be more helpful to some.

http://demo.ookla.com/linequality/    *and *
http://npad.iupui.lax01.measurement-lab.org:8000/   (Choose the closest
orig/term point to you from:
http://www.measurementlab.net/measurement-lab-tools#npad )

Both sites present varying granularity..  It goes without saying that
one should NOT send one's mother/grandmother to the NPAD site.  Pete
(Peter Löthberg) being the exception here.....  O:-)

Best,
Robert.
--






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