help needed - state of california needs a benchmark

Sat Jan 29 18:23:22 UTC 2011

On 29/01/11 10:00 -0800, Mike wrote:
>	The rub is, that they want to legislate that web based 
>'speedtest.com' is the ONLY and MOST AUTHORITATIVE metric that trumps 
>all other considerations and that the provider is %100 at fault and 
>responsible for making fraudulent claims if speedtest.com doesn't 
>agree. No discussion is allowed or permitted about sync rates, packet 
>loss, internet congestion, provider route diversity, end user 
>computer performance problems, far end congestion issues, far end 
>server issues or cpu loading, latency/rtt, or the like. They are 
>going to decide that the quality of any provider service, is solely 
>and exclusively resting on the numbers returned from 'speedtest.com' 
>alone, period.

If you license the software with Ookla, you can install it on a local
server and, with your permission, be listed on the speedtest.net site. When
your customers visit speedtest.net, your server is, or is close to, the
default server that your customers land at.

You could try to convince the state that their metric is suboptimal and X
is superior, but if your *customers* are anything like ours, it's even
harder to educate them why remote speed tests aren't always an accurate
measurement of the service you're providing.

We've learned to pick our fights, and this isn't one of them.

-- 
Dan White