
Fast.com: Netflix internet connection speed test - protomyth
https://fast.com/
======
exhilaration
This is from Netflix, it downloads Netflix content and reports the speed back.

This is important because unlike your average Internet speed test (which ISPs
take pains to optimize), there's a very real possibility that your ISP is
happy to let your Netflix experience suffer - assuming they don't throttle it
outright - as previously mentioned on HN:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7183682](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7183682)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7853603](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7853603)

~~~
Vraxx
I've had a tech who came to deal with a reported issue I was having tell me to
test on a specific Time Warner Cable speed test. He then got upset/flustered
when I used a different speed test to demonstrate that the issue was still
present. I had to explain that I use the internet connection I was paying for
to do things on domains that aren't owned and optimized by TWC.

~~~
jmtulloss
To give the tech the benefit of the doubt, it's possible that he just isn't
certain he can trust other speed tests. They may point to issues beyond his
control.

~~~
Vraxx
Yeah, it's tough to find the line of when to stop giving the benefit of the
doubt though. I was using speedtest.net at the time, which is pretty well
known and widely used. I had also had multiple visits recently regarding the
issue that still had not been resolved, and so my impatience made the decision
for me.

~~~
ckuehl
For what it's worth, ISPs are definitely shaping traffic to try to game
results on public speed tests.

I had an issue with Comcast last year where I would have large latency spikes
for ~2 hours every night, and speedtest.net always remained at normal latency:
[https://i.fluffy.cc/kNCxLMbkF2wx7NHFJxbzcgX35Bsb5nvl.png](https://i.fluffy.cc/kNCxLMbkF2wx7NHFJxbzcgX35Bsb5nvl.png)

I couldn't find any non-speedtest sites where my latency was less than 100ms,
but Comcast's own speed test, several other public speed tests, speedtest.net,
and even ookla.com (the company behind speedtest.net) were perfect (the ~20ms
you see on the graph).

~~~
mcpherrinm
Speedtest.net and other speedtests often choose the speedtest server that's
close to you and has low ping.

What you describe is probably congestion in the network somewhere that isn't
the last mile. Speed tests aren't a good indicator for any issues occurring
anywhere but the last mile, as they won't take the same path with fairly high
probability.

~~~
gruez
Given that he has a nice graph with hundreds of data points, I'm guessing he
got the ping results from the ping command, not by running the speedtest.net
test(which would actually select the lowest ping server)

~~~
mcpherrinm
You're right, though I had assumed he was pinging whatever server speedtest
had selected, which may be erronous.

Really, my point was that congestion is often localized in a network. The fact
that it isn't present in a path doesn't mean it's an ISP gaming speed tests -
though perhaps they'd be more keen on peering directly and avoiding congested
transit if it makes them look better, and I would absolutely believe that
would happen.

~~~
67726e
I think the argument is that the speed tests are testing ideal/non real-world
usage. That seems an awful lot like gaming the results. A more realistic,
indicative speed test might hit several servers at points around the country,
or even world. Most of my internet traffic is not hitting a server on the
outskirts of town or in the next small city over.

------
CyrusL
Cool. I just redirected [http://slow.com](http://slow.com) to
[https://fast.com](https://fast.com) .

~~~
cmdrfred
If I owned that I'd point it at comcast.com, but that's just me.

~~~
spike021
For what it's worth, I've had Comcast nearly 4 years and I'd say 80% of the
time, at least, the speed is great and I get more than what I pay for.

Occasionally at really odd times (mostly middle of the night) I'll get a
disconnection from service, but that hasn't happened in a long time, and maybe
twice in the past 4 months my speed has dropped pretty sharply. But for the
latter, when compared to the service I've gotten the entire time, it's just a
blip.

The customer service is absolutely awful though, unless by some odd luck I can
get forwarded to their corporate offices in the US.

~~~
jcrawfordor
I work from home, which means I'm hyper-sensitive to my internet quality. I
also sometimes work through the night to early in the morning.

I've found that my Comcast connection here in San Francisco fairly reliably
drops for a few minutes every day at around 2-3 am. Then it comes back and
works find again. I've thought about calling them about this before, but I'm
not sure that I want to spend a couple hours on the phone convincing them it's
a real issue.

~~~
okbake
I live near Atlanta and I get the same issue around the same time. It's not
reliably every night (thankfully, since I'm on almost every night) but it is
at least once or twice a week, sometimes more, for 15-45 minutes. I can see in
the modem logs where I'm losing my connection to them and the house phone also
gets disconnected.

I'm in the same boat as you where making the phone call feels like a huge
hassle. But it's interesting seeing a few other people with this same problem,
maybe I should call them after all.

~~~
cdowns
Seems like an E911 issue if your phone is going out almost regularly in the
middle of the night. That might get their attention more than anything...

Given the timeframe, it sounds like some sort of maintenance is scheduled
around that time- during "off-peak" hours.

------
finnn
For those hatin on speedtest.net and wanting upload,
[http://speedtest.dslreports.com/](http://speedtest.dslreports.com/) and
[https://speedof.me/](https://speedof.me/) have booth been around for a while.
The reason for fast.com is that it tests download speed from netflix. ISPs
can't prioritize it without prioritizing netflix as well.

~~~
nugget
Couldn't an ISP prioritize burst traffic but throttle streaming after X
minutes?

~~~
wnevets
sounds like we need a test that last as long as a movie.

~~~
jontas
Perhaps just a (optional) "download speed" display in the corner while
watching a movie..

~~~
eli
Netflix has an unofficial test movie that shows streaming speed:
[http://www.wired.com/2014/06/netflix-streaming-
test/](http://www.wired.com/2014/06/netflix-streaming-test/)

~~~
tajen
Or Netflix has a global index on the streaming speed for all movies, per ISP:
[https://ispspeedindex.netflix.com](https://ispspeedindex.netflix.com)

------
nlawalker
What I'd _really_ love to see is this concept provided as a service by all of
the big streaming/gaming/large-content-blob providers and aggregated into a
single page.

I have absolutely no reason to believe that every well-known "speed test"
app/site/utility out there isn't being gamed by my ISP. A speed test that
showed me my _actual_ streaming bandwidth from Netflix, _actual_ download
speed of an XX MB file from Steam, _actual_ upload bandwidth to some photo-
sharing service, and _actual_ latency to XBox Live or some well-trafficked
gaming service would be awesome.

~~~
nitrogen
_I have absolutely no reason to believe that every well-known "speed test"
app/site/utility out there isn't being gamed by my ISP._

Guess who runs the nearest speedtest.net server: Comcast.

~~~
virtuallynathan
There is good reasons for this, it can help a ton in figuring out where
exactly the issue is. If the speedtest server is off-net, you have no idea
where the problem lies. Transit provider? Peering? End network? my wifi? Last
mile?

~~~
CaptSpify
There may be some good reasons for this, but for even the best companies, it's
shady. And comcast is _far_ from one the best companies.

Instead, they should create a site that is clearly comcast branded and shows
the results of each step.

~~~
Sephr
They do: [http://speedtest.xfinity.com/](http://speedtest.xfinity.com/)

------
bdwalter
Seems like this is really about training their consumers to define the quality
of their internet by their reachability to the Netflix CDN nodes.. Smart move
on Netflix's part.

~~~
ihsw
To many, Netflix reachability is their #1 concern.

~~~
themartorana
I'm a software engineer with all sorts of shit hooked up to my 100mbps (thanks
Comcast for no gigabit in your worldwide headquarters city of Philadelphia)
downlink (still 10mbps up because you know...) and Netflix is absolutely my #1
concern at home.

~~~
rhino369
Eh, netflix maxes out content at a fraction your comcast speed. Doesn't really
matter if Netflix is going 50mbps or 100mpbs. Making netflix work is
important, but I'd be pretty disappointed if my ISP was giving me 20mpbs, even
though Netflix would never need that much.

~~~
lstamour
It matters if you've more than one Netflix stream running at the same time. It
will matter even more once Netflix starts doing VR ;-)

~~~
dsmithatx
And, having your pipe overloaded by things other than Netflix. I have two kids
watching Youtube on pads and a wife watching TV in another room. With my fake
Uverse (DSL) the TV uses the internet connection so, we are often streaming
four different videos at the same time.

------
gdulli
When I used to be a Netflix customer it was more the variability of my
connection that was an issue and not its "speed" at a given optimal time.

Usually I could begin a stream without problems. But often while streaming
(often enough for me to realize streaming was a bad experience) the bitrate
dynamically dropped way down to a terrible quality in response to what I
imagine were poor network conditions. Netflix no doubt sees this dynamic
quality adjustment as a feature, and preferable to buffering, but I chose an
HD stream and I'd rather even see an SD quality video that I could be sure
would stay that quality than switching between HD and very low bitrate, fuzzy,
artifacty video.

I don't blame Netflix for the quality of my connection, but streaming is just
not as reliable as cable and it's not one of those Moore's Law type things
where throwing more processing power or memory fixes the network issues.

~~~
trunnell
Hi, I work on the streaming algorithms at Netflix.

You are correct that throughput variability matters a lot as well. The trouble
is that the variability is somewhat unpredictable (at least, with our methods
so far).

And you're also right that we view the "dynamic quality adjustment" as a
feature! Without it, we wouldn't be able to serve both 0.5Mbps connections and
50Mbps connections seamlessly. But we don't like those sudden quality drops,
either. We track how often that occurs, as well as how often rebuffers occur,
and we work to eliminate both. We use large scale A/B testing to measure
improvements in the field. If it's been a while since you tried it, I humbly
suggest you consider trying it again. We've made a lot of progress.

If anyone is interested in working on this problem, we're currently hiring
engineers on the Streaming Algorithms team with a focus on mobile.
[https://jobs.netflix.com/jobs/860465](https://jobs.netflix.com/jobs/860465)

~~~
IgorPartola
Since I have you here, can I ask a random question? My kids love Puffin Rock,
and it's the only show that I would have issues streaming. It would start out
fine, but a few minutes into it start buffering and would take minutes; resume
for a bit, then do the same thing.

When this happened I could switch to any other Netflix show or movie and it
worked perfectly fine. When the kids whined, I'd switch back to Puffin Rock
and the problem would persist.

So my question is: is it possible that either some shows are encoded
differently so my player had trouble with it? Or is it that specific content
was being messed with by my ISP?

The players in question were Roku 2 and 3, and my ISP is Charter (business
plan). I haven't tried this in a few months since it got really annoying, but
can try again if it helps.

~~~
RKoutnik
Another Netflix engineer here - have you tried with something not popular? It
may be that the other shows you checked were cached via OpenConnect but Puffin
Rock wasn't.

My email is my username at netflix.com. If you can send me the email address
connected to your account, I can see that your problem gets to the right
people. (Disclaimer: I'm not on the OC or related teams directly)

~~~
gommm
I also have a question. According to fast.com, my connection is 270 mbp/s
(which jives with the official 500 mbps I'm getting). Yet, I've noticed that
on chrome on mac, when I launch a new show, it often starts at a very low
bitrate and then gradually switch to a higher bitrate. The problem is that
this happen on every episodes.

One workaround is using the ctrl-option-shift S combination and manually set
the bitrate to the highest settings but it's still a bit annoying.

~~~
lstamour
Have you tried the "Adjust your Netflix playback settings" advice at
[https://help.netflix.com/en/node/11559](https://help.netflix.com/en/node/11559)
? Not that I haven't seen this adaptive stream behaviour, but I find it
affects my mobile devices (like iPads) far more than on a wired, desktop
computer.

~~~
gommm
Hi, good point. I'll try that. Thanks!

------
vessenes
I like the idea of getting ISPs into internal conflict: the folks responsible
for making sure that speed checks like speedtest.net run quickly will be
fighting the folks responsible for throttling Netflix.

But, I think the throttling folks will ultimately win. In that case, I guess
Netflix is laying out a good case for consumers to complain, so it's win-win.

------
ejcx
This is super awesome! It's a good speedtest that works on mobile, which I had
not been able to find.

Funny thing is I found this in the source.

    
    
        <!-- TODO: add code to remove this script for prod build -->
            <!--<script>
                document.write('<script src="http://' + (location.host || 'localhost').split(':')[0] + ':8081/livereload.js?snipver=1"></' + 'script>')
            </script>-->
    

Not a big deal, but kind of funny.

------
kcorbitt
Really nice and easy to use -- the test starts way quicker than speedtest.net.

However, am I missing something, or does this only test downloading? I guess
that makes sense for Netflix's use case, but I'm usually at least as
interested in knowing my upload speed, because with typical asymmetric
connections that can be a bigger bottleneck for video calls and content-
production workloads.

~~~
nathancahill
Well, the nice thing about this is that they test with real-world streaming
data that ISPs can't game like the do on SpeedTest.net. What's the upload
equivalent of that? Flickr uploads?

~~~
mrgoldenbrown
I would say video chat is the biggest upload bottleneck that I care about.

~~~
nathancahill
Truth. Maybe we'll see Google Hangouts or Skype/Microsoft build their own
version of this for upload speeds.

------
victorNicollet
Very interesting, and it confirmed my suspicions that my ISP throttles me (or
at least, tries to).

I'm using Numericable from Paris and got 18Mbps to Netflix, 40Mbps to their
comparison test. By going through an SSH tunnel (which makes a 230km detour
through Roubaix), I get 39Mbps to both Netflix and control.

I am rather surprised that the bandwith loss caused by the SSH tunnel is so
small.

~~~
ngrilly
It's also possible that the route between Numericable and Netflix is
insufficiently provisioned, unlike the route from Numericable to your SSH
server to Netflix, which can have more capacity.

What I mean is that's probably not an intentional throttling. Anyway, it's
still a bad service. I have a similar issue sometimes with SFR...

------
jedberg
Oh man this is awesome. I can't wait till people start calling thier ISPs
claiming they aren't getting the speeds they pay for, only for the poor agent
to have to explain how peering agreements work.

~~~
Shivetya
Can't the ISPs just prioritize traffic to FAST to mitigate concerns?

~~~
pacofvf
According to Fast.com FAQ, they use the same "servers" that Netflix uses for
streaming:

> To calculate this estimate, Fast.com performs a series of downloads from
> Netflix servers.

So ISPs want a good Fast.com score then they should prioritize traffic to
NETFLIX. A very smart move by Netflix if you ask me.

~~~
casicone
That's nice, but isn't it still a violation of net neutrality?

~~~
allemagne
It's gaming the violation of net neutrality that already exists because of the
ISPs.

~~~
throwawaykf05
Is not wanting to peer with somebody for free a violation of net neutrality?

------
zodPod
I'd bet this is a move to make the ISPs that are throttling them look bad. If
people start to use it to check their speeds and they are downloading Netflix
content from Netflix and the ISP is throttling, it will look slower than it is
and more people will likely complain.

I like it. It's suitably evil!

~~~
Arcsech
Why is it evil? And if the ISP is throttling Netflix, it doesn't "look slower
than it is", it just accurately reports the throttled speed.

I mean sure, it's definitely to make ISPs look bad... if they're throttling
Netflix connections or otherwise providing slower than advertised speeds.
Which doesn't sound terribly evil to me.

~~~
legohead
Is it evil if it's illegal? [1]

[1] [https://consumercomplaints.fcc.gov/hc/en-
us/articles/2042314...](https://consumercomplaints.fcc.gov/hc/en-
us/articles/204231404-Open-Internet)

~~~
Vraxx
OP looks like he's calling Netflix's actions evil, and the post you're
replying to is questioning that. I think everybody in this comment chain
agrees that throttling based on domain is illegal and immoral for the ISP to
do.

~~~
zodPod
For the record, I meant evil in a fun way. Like a cartoon villain. Suitably
meaning that it was a good equal response to what they've been dealing with.

------
callmeed
Most interesting is comparing it to the ISP speed tests:

[http://www.timewarnercable.com/en/support/speed-
test.html](http://www.timewarnercable.com/en/support/speed-test.html)

[http://speedtest.charter.com/](http://speedtest.charter.com/)

[http://speedtest.xfinity.com/](http://speedtest.xfinity.com/)

Fast.com is reporting about 1/2 the speed of these for me (2 seem to use the
same Ookla speed test).

~~~
geocar
I'm getting the exact opposite: Fast.com/Speedtest.net are giving me numbers
more than double the ISP speed tests you linked to:

* [http://imgur.com/a/tHK2U](http://imgur.com/a/tHK2U)

~~~
walrus01
It very much depends on where the local speedtest.net server is in relation to
you in terms of network topology. If you're in a large city like SF or
Seattle, your ISP might host a 1U box from ookla or directly peer with them at
a major IX point less than 15 milliseconds away from you.

------
mofle
I made a command-line app for it: [https://github.com/sindresorhus/fast-
cli](https://github.com/sindresorhus/fast-cli)

------
danr4
This is good but my god what a waste of a domain name :(

~~~
aquilaFiera
You should go look at the shit that you used to be on Fast.com before Netflix
bought it:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20130726075933/http://www.fast.c...](https://web.archive.org/web/20130726075933/http://www.fast.com/)

~~~
zodPod
It used to be owned by Windstream? What a fucking joke. They are the worst DSL
provider that I've ever used.

------
gregmac
Some observations about this:

For me, it's getting stuff from
[https://*.cogeco.isp.nflxvideo.net](https://*.cogeco.isp.nflxvideo.net) \--
which indicates my ISP (Cogeco) is part of their Open Connect [1] program with
an on-network netflix cache.

Other people are reporting downloads from
[https://*.ix.nflxvideo.net](https://*.ix.nflxvideo.net), which appears to be
the Netflix cloud infrastructure.

It downloads data from 5 URLs every time, but their sizes fluctuate, something
like ~25MB, ~25MB, ~20MB, ~2.2MB, ~1.2MB.

The contents of each response appears to be the same (though truncated at a
difference place), with the beginning starting with:

    
    
        5d b9 3c a9 c3 b4 20 30  b9 bc 47 06 ab 63 22 11
    

`file` doesn't recognize what this is.

\----

Since it's https, ISPs shouldn't be able to easily game this (eg: make this go
fast, but still throttle video content).

So one potential way would be to only start throttling after 25MB is
downloaded (or after a connection is open for ~2 minutes): does anyone know
how Netflix actually streams? If they have separate HTTP sessions for 'chunks'
of a video, then presumably this wouldn't work.

They could see if a user visits fast.com and then unthrottle for some amount
of time. I'm not sure if ISPs have the infrastructure to do a complex rule
like this though (anyone know?). I also think this would be relatively easy
for users to notice (anytime they visit fast.com, their netflix problems
disappear for a while) and there would be a pretty big backlash about
something so blatant.

[1] [https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/](https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/)

------
janpieterz
Odd, on a dedicated 500 mbit line I've now gotten 6 different results, ranging
from 350-500. Speedtest.net indicates a stable 500+ mbit line, downloads from
very fast servers always max it out at 500 as well.

Besides stabilizing it a bit, getting the upload on there would be amazing,
it's certainly a lot nicer for the eye than speedtest.net.

~~~
nathancahill
That's because ISPs game SpeedTest.net and give you your full bandwidth for
the test data. So the 350-500 is more accurate to your actual milage (at least
for Netflix's peering agreements).

~~~
janpieterz
That would be totally valid, except I get a perfectly fine and stable 500 down
from, for example, Microsoft's MSDN, depending on the size of the ISO showing
this straight for a couple of minutes..

~~~
nathancahill
Right, this tool only tests your ISP's speed for Netflix content, which most
tend to throttle. For the majority of people, Netflix is the only way that the
saturate their bandwidth, so this tool is more relevant to them than to people
downloading ISOs. I generally speed test by wget'ing a large ISO because those
numbers are more relevant to me.

------
mrbill
Interesting. Even over multiple tests, I get almost exactly 1/3rd the download
bandwidth speed to NetFlix that I do testing with speedtest.net.

~~~
drewg123
This tool exists exactly to highlight cases like yours.

Sounds like your ISP has over-subscribed its connection to whatever IX is
serving this to you, and that they're hosting speedtest locally in their
network.

~~~
tracker1
More likely the speedtest sites have a much higher QOS definition, and are
unthrottled, while netflix is explicitly throttled.

~~~
drewg123
It is probably both.

I'm a Comcast customer. When I run speedtest & tcpdump the traffic, i'm nearly
always talking to something .comcast.net, and it is just a few hops away via
traceroute.

When I use fast.com, I'm talking to various ix.nflxvideo.net hosts, all at
least 4 to 6 hops farther away.

The amusing thing is that I get better speed with the fast,com (140Mb/s) than
with speedtest (133Mb/s).

------
_jomo
I also like speedof.me which tests latency, download, and upload but purely
using HTML5/JS (unlike speedtest.net with it's Flash app)

~~~
jlgaddis
There's also a command-line "client" for speedtest.net, _speedtest-cli_ [0],
that just uses Python.

I use it because I don't have Flash installed anywhere. It's handy for remote
or headless machines too.

[0]: [https://github.com/sivel/speedtest-
cli](https://github.com/sivel/speedtest-cli)

~~~
virtuallynathan
That client is not at all reliable above about 30Mbps, and the dev just closes
all issues about it.

------
tigeba
Just for a reference point, I'm getting about 350 on Google Fiber in Kansas
City.

~~~
ericabiz
Interesting. I'm on AT&T Gigabit (Google Fiber competitor here in Austin) and
I got 660Mbit on fast.com (Windows 10 desktop directly connected via
Ethernet.) A MacBook Pro laptop with Wifi (802.11ac) connected a few rooms
away shows 260Mbit.

Are you wireless or wired? If wired, that seems quite low.

~~~
b3b0p
Thanks for reporting. I'll test when I get home, but I'm also in Austin and
have Gigapower. I was afraid that it would almost embarrassingly low, but your
results gave me hope. I'm curious what the Google Fiber and Grande users here
get.

~~~
1000hz
I'm on Grande's gigabit and am getting ~180-200 Mbps over 802.11ac a couple
rooms away. Sadly I don't have an ethernet dongle for my macbook pro to test a
wired connection.

------
smaili
Not to sound ignorant, but what's the point? Why would Netflix go through the
trouble of acquiring what I suspect to be a fairly expensive domain just to
show how fast one's internet speed is?

~~~
random28345
> I find it hard to believe their motives are purely altruistic.

Absolutely selfish. Their goal is to make boatloads of money by pressuring
ISPs to allow their customers to access Netflix at the speeds the customers
paid for. Once customers can use their high speed internet, many will choose
to be Netflix customers.

~~~
stormbrew
It's interesting to describe something that gets people what they pay for as
selfish on the part of a third party. I mean, yes, there is something in it
for netflix, but it arises from making things better for their users. I'd
describe that as win-win, personally.

Now, killing performance on a service your users want so you can force an
inferior product on them? That's selfish.

~~~
random28345
> It's interesting to describe something that gets people what they pay for as
> selfish on the part of a third party.

It's selfish because it is done with the goal of increasing Netflix's revenue.

Now, in this case selfish doesn't mean evil. To the contrary, Netflix's
success will mean happier people, more satisfied customers. Much in the same
way auto manufacturers make safer cars for higher profits, or surgeons can
make a comfortable living saving lives.

Netflix is simply trying to make a buck, and if some people get helped in the
process, that's just collateral benefit.

~~~
lliamander
>Now, in this case selfish doesn't mean evil. To the contrary, Netflix's
success will mean happier people, more satisfied customers. Much in the same
way auto manufacturers make safer cars for higher profits, or surgeons can
make a comfortable living saving lives.

I would not call that "selfish", nor would I call it "altruistic". I would
perhaps say "fair" or "just".

"Selfish" is generally a negative word. We often refer to any self-regarding
behavior as selfish: both rational self-interest pursued in a manner
respecting the needs of others, and the miserliness or enviousness that (often
deliberately) pursues self-interest at the expense of others needs. Sometimes
we state the equivocation in the form of a paradox to catch our audience's
attention (the capitalist's aphorism "greed is good") and sometimes as a slur
("those greedy capitalists!"). However, I think it would be helpful if in the
normal case we recognized that not all self-regarding behavior is selfish.

Note: I don't mean to nitpick, and I agree with the spirit of your post.
Rather, your words were to me a catalyst for some thoughts on moral discourse.

------
iLoch
Description would be nice for anyone on mobile who doesn't want to needlessly
waste bandwidth.

~~~
protomyth
Yep, changed the title, sorry.

------
pazra
This is nice and great that it loads quickly with no bloat or distractions.
Not sure about the domain name though, as it's not immediately obvious what
the site is for.

------
nodesocket
While cool, I can't believe they bought and use fast.com for something so
simple. Fast.com has to be worth some coin. Anybody have any idea what that
domain is worth?

~~~
trothamel
It strikes me that if this is part of a strategy to get peering agreements
with ISPs, they could save a lot of money in the long run.

EDIT: Added the word peering.

------
stanleydrew
I'm pretty sure Google is about to release a speed test tool embedded directly
into its SRP for speed-test-related queries.

Similarly to how they eliminated the need for third-party IP address checking
tools by returning your actual IP address when you search for "what's my ip
address".

~~~
dpcx
They didn't eliminate the need. To get my IP from there programmatically, I'd
have to parse the DOM. Or, I can "curl [https://i.ngx.cc"](https://i.ngx.cc"),
and have it immediately available.

~~~
nitrogen
Just make sure your scripts won't fail if the site claims your IP is "$(rm -rf
/)".

------
pgrote
The amount of data netflix will collect from this is exciting! I can only
imagine the stories it will tell once hundreds of thousands of people use it.
It would be fantastic to see how the agreements between ISPs and netflix
affect the data transfer rates.

~~~
nicky0
Surely they already have tons of speed data from millions of video streams
they serve.

~~~
pgrote
Absolutely and they have provided great metrics on the streaming performance
of their customers.

This opens it up for folks who are not netflix customers, which hopefully
gathers more data .

------
isomorphic
I have multiple WAN connections (multiple ISPs). This actually (correctly)
reports the _aggregate_ download speed!

Obviously if they are "downloading multiple files," they aren't waiting for
them to complete synchronously.

------
loganabbott
I prefer the speed test here:
[https://www.voipreview.org/speedtest](https://www.voipreview.org/speedtest)
No flash or silverlight required and a lot more details

~~~
mjs7231
The secret here is that this is measuring speed to Netflix, which on many ISPs
is throttled well beyond what other speed tests will report. I'm in the Boston
area and getting 100Mbps on fast.com, but getting 250Mbps on speedtest.net.
Fast.com is even encouraging you to compare their result with speedtest.net.

It's a pretty smart tactic. If you're paying for 150Mbps, but being throttled
to 100Mbps on Netflix and your ISP doesn't tell you, you're not really getting
what you pay for.

------
danvoell
I feel like you could do more with this domain. Cool little tool though.

~~~
vthallam
Exactly! This is a really cool domain. Would be great for a delivery/mailing
service :)

------
manmal
I have absolutely terrible Netflix quality on my Samsung TV sometimes, but it
shows 68MBit here. Makes me wonder whether the firmware is to blame..

~~~
mikeyouse
It definitely is.. I have a newish Samsung smart TV and the streaming quality
was always garbage. I got an Apple TV and HBO and Netflix consistently stream
at their highest bitrates via the same 150mbps internet connection.

------
erickhill
Thanks Xfinity. For my home service fast.com should redirect to slow.com. 5.2
Mbps (it's sold at 50 Mbps with asterisks everywhere).

~~~
nodesocket
When I get home I'll check my Xfinity connection (SF). When I run speedtest I
get over 150Mbps down.

~~~
erickhill
My office also uses Comcast/xfinity for business. Incredibly, in 2016, we had
to get a $40 device that reboots the modem and router every single day once a
day when the office is closed. This is the solution we were given to maintain
decent speeds with their hardware. And it works.

But it's sad.

------
smhenderson
OK, so I get 48 on fast.com and decided to use the link to compare on
speedtest.net. There I get 101 down, 112 up.

So while 48 seems very fast to me (I get 19 at work) it's a lot less than 101.
Is Verizon throttling the connection or is NetFlix not giving me more the ~50?
At what point is the cap on NetFlix's side and not the client connection?

~~~
bluedino
That's the whole point of the test - there is something between your provider
and NetFlix that is limiting the connection

~~~
smhenderson
OK, I get that. My point is at what point is a connection fast enough that NF
won't serve you any faster? I get 101 download on speedtest but I've never
downloaded an ISO file and had it download any faster than 5-6. The service on
the other end has a say in how fast my downloads are. So my question is there
some theoretical cap on the NF side that says anything over (arbitrary-number>
is fast enough so clients are capped at that.

I'm on FIOS so I would not be surprised at all that VZ throttles the
connection but on the other hand why cap it at ~50 and not at 5 or whatever?
At 50 my connection is fast enough for me to watch full HD so it's not as if
there turning me into a frustrated customer who decides cutting the cable is
more hassle than it's worth...

~~~
bluedino
It'll do more than 50 -
[http://i.imgur.com/14v10xr.png](http://i.imgur.com/14v10xr.png)

------
Hesadanza
One thing that Fast.com doesn't say is the top speed that Netflix's servers
can deliver. I have 250 Mb fiber connection, and Fast.com tops out at about
150 Mbps for me. Speedtest.net consistently shows 250-280 Mbps. But it's
unclear whether the lower rate is Netflix's servers limit, or my ISP
throttling them.

------
k4rtik
Is it inflating the results shown on Wi-Fi?

I am on a MacBook Air Early 2014 and my current link speed is 144 Mbit/s
according to Network Utility, but fast.com shows between 210 to 230 Mbps on
each run.

Speedtest.net results are consistent as before at ~38 Mpbs, which is what I
would expect from the routers around me.

------
lemiffe
Only downlink? For me uplink is more important, and I suspect for others as
well (gaming/streaming).

~~~
smhenderson
The amount of data you upload to NetFlix to watch a stream is negligible so
really doesn't apply in this case. This site is strictly to see if your ISP is
purposely slowing down your streaming specifically from NetFlix.

------
athenot
This is interesting.

Test 1: on Comcast but connected to company's VPN: 48Mb/s

Test 2: on Comcast but not on the VPN: 11Mb/s

~~~
fosco
Wonder if the formula just calculates based on the public IP that hits
fast.com rather than the client to fast.com

I have yet to see a speed test I believe, I am not getting 33mb down.

------
jasallen
Wow, "fast.com" is one helluva valuable piece of DNS real estate Netflix is
throwing at this.

------
IgorPartola
Yup, and it nicely confirms that (a) my Charter connection is in fact 65 Mbps
down and (b) I can't get faster internet where I live.

Oh, and 5 Mbps up is just ridiculous. That's what I get with my business plan.
Back up a TB of data to the cloud? Yeah, that'll take weeks.

~~~
PuffinBlue
> Back up a TB of data to the cloud? Yeah, that'll take weeks.

I feel your pain. 12Mbps here but it seems that Crashplan tops out at 4.5Mbps
anyway here in the UK so sending 2.3TB up there took over 2 months.

~~~
IgorPartola
Ya. And at my 5 Mbps up, I'd have to throttle it myself, otherwise my internet
connection here would be useless for the weeks it takes to upload.

------
vonklaus
My internet speed (according to fast.com) is 0. Adblock & uBlock off on the
site & fast.com uses https. Not sure why it wouldn't be working, no VPN in
middle. Anyone else having issues?

edit: Speedtest.net was ~38mbps down. Is a netflix subscription nec. for this?

~~~
lliamander
>Is a netflix subscription nec. for this?

Don't think so. I can reach it from a computer that has never logged into my
Netflix account. Can you reach the main netflix website?

~~~
vonklaus
I can reach netflix.com. I can now reach fast.com. I am skeptical that the
results are correct, i pay for 50mbps, typcally receive ~40ish, and fast.com
says avg of 56

edit: can't reach servers again. no idea why, currently behind vpn now. No
disruptions anywhere. I wonder if the site is just under heavy load and
failing but not returning proper status codes.

------
ahamdy
The download speed is absolutely incorrect, I live in a 3rd world country and
have a 2Mb connection I get max 200/kb max download rate, fast.com is showing
a download speed of 1.2Mb I really wish it was true

------
zmitri
Speed is halved using fast.com (140 down) vs speedtest (287 down) and I'm
currently on Paxio in Oakland [http://www.paxio.com](http://www.paxio.com)

~~~
AlgorithmicTime
I find it's about 10 Mbps slower on Cablevision.

------
kilroy123
Why doesn't netflix just try to by-pass ISPs by rolling out their own service?

Big ISPs are starting to cap data, to stop/slow-down netflix. They should just
put out their own high speed service like Google.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
If only it were that easy...

~~~
kilroy123
They have the money. Could end up being very profitable down the line.

~~~
fred256
Google is doing this with Google Fiber and it's not exactly making a ton of
progress :(

------
nodesocket
Interesting looking at Chrome developer tools, lots of magic and interesting
payloads.

The http header Via is interesting as it lists the AWS instance that served
the request and region. i-654a87b8 (us-west-2)

------
myrandomcomment
On AT&T U-verse in Palo Alto area. $72 p/month for 24mb now with even more
data caps.

Fast.com ~23mb Speedtest.net ~38mb

Hum, I wonder which is right and which is the ISP screwing with traffic?

~~~
thomaskcr
Speedtest is a more accurate measure of what you're actually paying for -
which is a connection to the ATT network. The speedtest server is right on
their network most likely.

Fast.com is a more functional test, specifically measuring how fast a
connection on the ATT network in that area to the Netflix servers is. You're
not paying ATT for a 24mb/s connection to every server on the entire internet
because that would be impossible (how could your ISP promise you that much
bandwidth across a transatlantic cable, or over a satellite link, or to a
server connected via dialup). More generally, you're testing the strength of
their peering and the route available for a specific purpose (watching
Netflix).

They aren't measuring the same thing at all. It would be like buying a 100mb/s
router, plugging it into 20mb/s internet and then complaining that your router
is broken because you can't download at 100mb/s. Your router will still show
your ability to contact other computers in your house as 100mb/s (analogous to
speedtest), but reaching computers outside your network (analogous to fast) is
limited by the speed of your connection to the next larger network.

~~~
myrandomcomment
Speedtest.net provides many different servers, most of which are not on the
AT&T network. The IP is not in the AT&T space and the AS path leaves AT&Ts
network.

In the end until someone can provide a dump of what is in the routers settings
it is all a guessing game.

------
cletusw
Dupe of
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11723157](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11723157)
?

~~~
dang
Since that one was posted later and doesn't add much info, I think we'll treat
it as a dupe of this.

------
known
I prefer [http://linux.die.net/man/1/nload](http://linux.die.net/man/1/nload)

------
EpicEng
Well... I just found out that my connection went from 20Mb to ~120Mb recently.
I have no idea when this happened and my bill hasn't changed.

------
dangson
Not surprisingly since this is downloading Netflix content, it doesn't work
when I'm connected through Private Internet Access VPN.

------
mrmondo
Just tried it on our 300/300Mbit link at work, lots of people working today so
it'll be heavily under use but:

\- Netflix: 240Mbit/s

\- Speedtest: 293Mbit/s

------
caludio
Mhh, I get consistently (much) lower Mbps with Firefox than with Chrome. Is it
how it's supposed to be? Is it my network maybe?

------
JustSomeNobody
How long until ISPs catch on and make sure fast.com is given a high priority?

I don't see how this will accomplish anything for Netflix.

~~~
ljf
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11723035](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11723035)

~~~
JustSomeNobody
So, you're saying ISPs can't prioritize the traffic from/to fast.com while
throttling Netflix.com?

~~~
irishcoffee
Yes.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
I'm not convinced that is entirely true.

~~~
Rooster61
How could they? It is traffic going back and forth to the Netflix servers over
https. The ISP can't tell WHAT is in that traffic, only where it is going.
Thus, if they throttle Netflix, they throttle fast.com.

~~~
tjl
The simplest way would be to cheat and prioritize traffic for a few minutes
and then throttle. That way, any speed test would come out fine but not actual
shows.

------
vadym909
Wow- this is awesome. I hated speedtest.net

~~~
passivepinetree
Would you mind elaborating on that? What are the issues with speedtest.net?

~~~
Amorymeltzer
Not OP but it's a large, hideous site with a lot of junk I don't care about.
The faux-futuristic map with an arc to a pyramid? The colored odometer with a
variable scale? Creating an account? Ads?

As others have mentioned, ISPs can game the speedtest.net results, whereas
with fast.com users will get exactly what they want: a single number that
shows how fast they get Netflix. No frills, nothing else. Some of the advanced
features of speedtest.net are useful for some advanced users, but it's a weird
de-facto standard that caters to the tiny minority.

~~~
passivepinetree
Those are pretty good points. The big appeal for fast.com for me is that it
measures the connection to Netflix's services and ISP's can't game it, but I
still wish it gave more information than a single number.

------
bodytaing
This is an awesome alternative to the other speed tests because it's very
minimal and has a clutter-free UI.

------
martin-adams
Cool tool. I'd love to know the story behind how Netflix managed to use such a
lucrative domain.

------
narfz
is there a bandwidth cap? i constantly get 160Mbps but i know for sure that
our office line can do way more. speedtest.net is always close to 900Mbps.
maybe speedtest.net has a endpoint within the ISP backbone and netflix not? or
is the peering between AWS and my ISP?

------
mrmondo
Doesn't work at all well for me here in Melbourne on 4g. Netflix: 7Mbit,
speedtest.net: 39Mbit

------
hacks412
Is this a way for them to optimize who they deliver faster streaming services
to?

------
parfe
730mpbs to fast.com while only 700mbps on speedtest.net (with 853mbps up).

~~~
nicky0
What kind of connection gives you 730Mbps?

~~~
kinai
Gigabit becomes quite common in Europe. I get 910

~~~
nicky0
Wow. Is this a home consumer connection? What is the cost?

~~~
kinai
40 Euro. 100mbit 9,90, 600mbit 19,90. Eastern Europe for the win ;)

~~~
photonios
Bit on the high side, I pay a fourth of that here :)

~~~
nicky0
10 euro/month for 1 gigabit?

------
techaddict009
No upload speed results?

~~~
nodesocket
Upload does not matter when streaming video.

------
arnorhs
man, i'd love to see something like this for twitch streams. i feel like i
have problems with twitch streams at specific times per day.

------
wil421
On my laptop:

First test: 55mbps

Second: 35mbps

Third: 22mbps

Fourth: 22mbps

Speedtest: right at 36mbps every time.

It seems to be more stable on my cellphone.

------
philjackson
SPEED MEGATHREAD, post your speed/location/ISP below here:

44Mbps / London, uk / BT

~~~
PuffinBlue
200Mbps / Stonehenge, UK / Virgin Media

Exactly as advertised though having the cabinet on my front garden does mean I
can get about 220Mbps in the quietest periods so I"m fairly lucky.

Unfortunately, a 12Mbps throttled upload is not a great experience, especially
when Virgin had said it would be at least 200/20.

------
jefurii
Yawn, only checks download speed.

~~~
bsg75
From a consumer standpoint, that is the more interesting metric.

For those of us who frequent HN, it is only half the picture.

~~~
rconti
Or like 9/10 the picture

------
developer545
It's surprising that people on HackerNews don't seem to understand the basics
of how the Internet works.

~~~
dsl
No its not. Go interview developers sometime.

~~~
davidgerard
I have had that conversation with developers, where I literally was pointing
them at the Wikipedia article and quoting bits back at them. Fun times.
_[citation needed]_

