
Netflix launches its own speed test website, Fast.com - ck2
http://techcrunch.com/2016/05/18/netflix-launches-its-own-speed-test-website-fast-com/
======
colinbartlett
Previous discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11722775](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11722775)

------
ck2
That domain name must have cost them a fortune.

I see what they keep to keep it stupid simple for novices on the main page but
they really need to add advanced testing for experts if they want to get
support of the service.

~~~
mdrzn
Taken from the previous discussion
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11722775](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11722775)):

"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".

It's not for deep network testing, it's just to see if your Netflix is being
slowed down or not.

------
oneeyedpigeon
Every video on demand service I've used (Netflix, Amazon, etc.) streams the
video. This is all well and good, but it requires an uninterrupted connection
for about 2 hours if I'm watching a film. Or it requires the service to buffer
for at least as much time as any outage may last - something which appears not
to happen. Are there any competitors that can guarantee me a nice,
interruption-free experience like a good old dvd provides?

~~~
ryanlol
Pirate.

If it makes you feel better, pay and then "pirate".

As long as Netflix & co keep giving the frankly ridiculous excuse of
preventing piracy as the reason I can't stream 4K content with mpv, I'm going
to remain _very_ reluctant to give them my money. (I'd be much less reluctant
if their anti piracy efforts actually worked, but they don't and they never
will)

~~~
afarrell
> if it makes you feel better

Why do that, when you already give the creators exposure? Surely an lighting
technician and a sound engineer can pay for groceries in exposure, right?

~~~
ryanl0l
Netflix pays fixed licensing fees, giving them money certainly isn't going to
do much to help those lighting technicians and sound engineers very much.

Perhaps those lighting technicians and sound engineers should just leave the
industry that insists upon making it ridiculously difficult to give them
money, if I want to get a high quality digital copy of a movie or TV series
the _only_ option is logging into BTN or PTP and grabbing a bluray remux.

Hell, often these communities have content available at a significantly higher
quality than any of the official releases. See DIMENSIONs 20GB mad men
episodes for example.

I personally just frequent the cinemas, and try to pay for the few TV series
that I can, despite it often being impossible here.

------
mofle
Command-line tool for Fast.com: [https://github.com/sindresorhus/fast-
cli](https://github.com/sindresorhus/fast-cli)

------
bsharitt
It seems to be topping out at 100Mbps for me.

~~~
mh-
That doesn't seem to be a cap they put in-
[http://i.imgur.com/wr4Zb0k.png](http://i.imgur.com/wr4Zb0k.png)

