The problem with this is that Fast.com is owned by Netflix, which is such a significant consumer of bandwidth that it inclines ISPs to shape traffic to fudge the numbers. Essentially, this kind of speed test only really tells you what the maximum bandwidth your ISP is able to provide you is, rather than what they're really providing. Even then, the test result with Fast.com could be subject to traffic shaping or slowdown at the remote end, so what is the result really telling you at all?
In fairness, this would be true of any popular speed test, and I'm not sure of an obvious solution. Any kind of tunneling or onion routing would render the test pointless anyway, so I'm not sure of the extent to which you can ever really trust a speed test of this nature. The only really useful data for this kind of analysis is likely to come from a router with sufficiently sophisticated software that it can report on transfer rates over time (which many do), and even then, that doesn't account for scenarios where the remote connection is the bottleneck.
That’s a feature, not a bug. It was originally created in the context of the net neutrality debate. This allows you to see if your ISP is cheating you on Netflix bandwidth, supposedly in order to push their own media-on-demand product.
It was introduced after reports of ISPs doing just that, and it was Netflix’ way of hitting back.
Indeed, and it's a wonderful, useful feature. So useful to consumers, that a french ISP (Free) wasn't very happy with it and sued Netflix for it in june 2017.
I have no idea if this lawsuit is still ongoing, because Free seemed to have had a first peering with Netflix in April, and has been going up in the chart:
Netflix uses fast.com and their speed index as a way to extort ISPs into giving them traffic for free. They refuse to pay any fees to connect directly to ISPs and then they use that website to imply they are being throttled when the meager free routes they use get saturated, which is their own fault.
I know net neutrality is no longer law, but I think if you interviewed a thousand people on this site, you might be the only one miffed that Netflix isn't paying ISPs for faster routes.
Put another way, it is my impression that consumers are already paying for bandwith. Getting Netflix to pay for faster routes would mean ISPs are double-dipping.
Netflix (and Youtube and Hulu and all the other big content providers) pay big bucks (millions per month) to get the content from their servers to the internet backbone. Their contracts with their ISPs don't specify where the traffic goes. They just buy lots of 10 gpbs links, and send the data off. They're paying their share.
Your contract with your ISP doesn't distinguish between getting traffic from a mom&pop website or Netflix. It just said they would deliver the rated speed (7 mpbs or 10mbps, or 100mbs) of data to you for your fixed monthly fee.
When the ISPs found out that people were actually using that much data (that YOU PAID FOR), they found they had underprovisioned their network, and couldn't support the load. ISPs started saying, "Netflix is using too much", because, really, it's rude to blame your customer for using the service you provide as contracted.
This is called double-dipping.
So - Netflix is paying their fair share. You are paying your fair share. If your ISP can't handle the traffic demands of their customers, they need to suck it up and provide the capacity that you're paying for.
ISPs are neutral here, the problem is, once again, that Netflix uses a HUGE amount of traffic, and the normal routes (the ones everybody gets) get saturated.
If they want "premium" routes for their MASSIVE traffic, they will have to pay to the ISPs. I think that's reasonable. Giving them premium routes for free would not be neutral, would it? ;)
Either their infrastructure supports what the customer is paying for or it doesn't. If the ISP is running crusty old routes they're slacking and customers should migrate away from them as soon as feasible.
ISPs should provide connection to the internet for their customers in exchange for a monthly bill. How they do that isn't the customer's concern and it shouldn't be Netflix's concern. The only ISP Netflix should be paying is their own link to the internet (AWS last I heard)
Side note, Netflix isn't using any traffic. They're not sending me a UHD video stream unsolicited. I'm using the traffic.
>Side note, Netflix isn't using any traffic. They're not sending me a UHD video stream unsolicited. I'm using the traffic.
Milk companies put their lorries in the highway to deliver their products. You're the one buying milk. Are you the one who's using the highways?
If Netflix wants a premium highway let them pay for it. Otherwise they will have to use the normal highway, the one that's worked fine until Netflix decided to fill it with lorries.
In a less direct sense, yes. If there was no demand for milk in my area there would be no milk lorries sent to my area
Sidebar: I do wish HN had a rule against these kinds of analogies as they do other reddit-esque puns and the likes. The internet is not like a milk truck, it's not like a series of tubes, it's like 1s and 0s being communicated across a worldwide mesh of cables of varying material under the control of varying entities
We're all at least vaguely techy enough that we're on HN, we can understand at least the basics. Lets talk about what it is, not what it's like.
Except that I pay for an highway that should support 100 mb/s and they pay for an highway that should support 100 mb/s, yet it only support 10 mb/s.
The Netflix route is using too much bandwidth? Then upgrade it, that's what your customer pay you for. For sure there will be route that will be unequal, some too big, some too small, but that's part of ISP job to make sure its impact is minimal.
BOB pays ALICE for a connection at fixed uplink/downlink parameters to the public collective of interconnected autonomous networks commonly referred to as INTERNET.
BOB uses the service as advertised to connect to CAROL’s autonomous network.
ALICE fails to adequately peer with CAROL’s autonomous network and calls it a feature.
BOB can’t switch ISPs because ALICE has monopoly on the service where he lives.
ALICE tries to muddy the waters with nonsensical milk lorry analogies that have nothing to do with fiber optic cables to maintain its monopoly and further leverage it to run protection racket on CAROL.
Sounds about right?
When BOB is paying ALICE for the service, he is implicitly paying for whatever “highway” connects his house and CAROL’s milk depots. Everything between the two points is ALICE’s responsibility. If ALICE doesn’t like that BOB mostly orders his milk from CAROL’s then she shouldn’t offer the service as supporting fixed amount of lorries per hour.
>ALICE fails to adequately peer with CAROL’s autonomous network and calls it a feature.
It also works the other way around: CAROL does not want to pay ALICE to have premium access.
Also, laughable that you call me a shill. Seems like the most used argument when you don't agree with someone. I'm not even American. So your "BOB can't switch ISPs" does not even apply here.
> It also works the other way around: CAROL does not want to pay ALICE to have premium access.
How does this logically follow? CAROL advertises fixed downlink/uplink connection to any autonomous network. How is it “premium access” to deliver on what you are actually advertising?
It’s like selling SSD drives and then saying oh yeah but if you store video files in this particular video codec they will play at only 15 fps unless the codec vendor pays us extra for a firmware update.
> So your "BOB can't switch ISPs" does not even apply here.
It applies to the particular Netflix/neutrality debate.
> also works the other way around: CAROL does not want to pay ALICE to have premium access.
As others have mentioned there is no extra "premium" access needed.
Netflix pays for their whole upstream, probably a bit extra for redundant uplinks etc.
Customers pay for the entire downstream.
Everyone in between just have to accept the bits and forward them within reasonable time (Netflix has some caching in the client so it shouldn't be to hard unless someone has oversold their capacity.)
> Also, laughable that you call me a shill.
I looked at your recent comment history and I agree.
That said you really seem to defend an undefendable practice to the point where I understand where people get that idea from.
So I'd rather guess you enjoy annoying people on the internet to see them get mad.
The way I see it is net neutrality is very unfair to the isp. It creates unnecessary burden to the isp. Of course Isp will hate it and will fight for it as much as their can.
Those ISPs can only fight this “burden” by taking advantage of their unfair monopoly. If there was an actual free market competition there would be no need for net neutrality in the first place.
BOB could just switch to using DAVE’s ISP service, who would be happy to connect him with CAROL’s AN without any throttling.
Just because an action is in their best interest does not absolve them from the fault of that action. Arguably, one can usually safely assume the opposite.
While your statement of "of course they are not happy with it" is true, it's not a defense in my mind. The same could be said about any regulation that controls indefensible practices of companies.
From oil companies, to fishing companies, to waste disposal to whatever, most companies from a purely technical viewpoint would be more than happy to get rid of regulations that control what and how they can do business. Yet, we have those regulations in place for a reason.
In this case we simply ask that ISPs deliver the bits we paid for. I don't want Comcast treating my bits differently anymore than I want my mail carrier to hold my packages ransom because they seem important and I'd probably pay more for them.
My mail carrier doesn't read my mail. Comcast shouldn't either.
Yes of course it always depends on which side are one on. If I'm the customer sure I don't want isp throttle my bits but If I'm the isp, I want the freedom to throttle.
Net neutrality requires that ISPs actually deliver what they've advertised and collected payment for and claimed to deliver. Of course they're not happy with that. It's much easier to deliver less than promised but still pocket the full payment.
Correction - make it comply with Title 2. Net neutrality isn't what the FCC killed, Title 2 (which is still a massive blob of legislation, even if you discount the stuff in forbearance) is a set of laws that ensure a kind of neutrality.
The grocery store bought the milk so that’s why the truck is on the highway. The truck (Netflix) wouldn’t be there if the grocery store (customer) didn’t order the milk.
If we imagine Netflix traffic as milk trucks delivering milk B2C, the “downlink” road to a milk buyer’s house would likely be maintained by neighborhood home owners’ association, thus ultimately paid for by the consumer.
Those highways between the farm and the neighborhood, though… Anyway, either the analogy breaks or it’s onto something!
What's the problem with routes getting saturated? The consumers are paying for bandwidth and if they're using it all for Netflix, that's their choice.
The only problem is if the ISP can't actually deliver the bandwidth that they promised in exchange for taking the consumers money. That's called a scam.
Couple of megabits from time to time, not even every night, is not a HUGE or a MASSIVE traffic, neither it has to be "premium". It's very normal traffic, on the lower end even. It's just some ISPs are monopolies and want to abuse their position and extort money from anyone they can, despite the fact that customers pay them to literally provide access to those services.
> ISPs are neutral here, the problem is, once again, that Netflix uses a HUGE amount of traffic, and the normal routes (the ones everybody gets) get saturated.
What I don't get is, both Netflix and I pay for bandwidth. As far as consumer bandwidth (mine) is concerned, why should Comcast care if it's 1TB/month coming from a thousand sites or just one. I paid for the data, I paid for the bandwidth, give me my bandwidth.
Likewise, Netflix paid for their own too, with whoever is their ISP.
Conceptually the bandwidth has to be paid for, and I could see your argument if I only paid a portion of what it costs to transfer the data.. but that is a broken model if that's the way it is. I want to pay for data, and I shouldn't have to get Movies.com to pay Comcast to serve me movies. I paid Comcast for data, it doesn't matter who it's from. My data is my data.
Is this wrong somehow to you? Honestly it's a strange argument from you, I have a hard time understanding. Like, if you run a website and I visit your website, do you think you should have to pay my ISP for data I'm downloading from your site? That's a bizarre system in my mind.
ISPs were or are double dipping. They actively started throttling Netflix even when there was no congestion or traffic only so that they could extort money out of Netflix. You could access YouTube, Vimeo or their own video-on-demand without any compromise in quality but Netflix was forced to a crawl.
If Netflix wants to pay extra to deal with saturation they are more than welcome too but if ISPs are denying their subscribers access to a service, even when spare bandwidth was available and sitting unutilized then its time for pitchforks to come out
Netflix rarely consumes Internet traffic as your statement assumes. Netflix has content caching at, pretty much, most legitimately sized ISP and peering points today. That means you're probably watching your content without leaving your ISPs network. The ISP pays pretty much nothing for transport (because Netflix provides them with a way to alleviate that) however the customer gets better service and quality of Netflix because the content is local. While this isn't always true neither is the thought that all traffic is heading back to Netflix HQ and saturating all of the Internet links in between.
Then how is fast.com effective at all? It was created to show that ISPs were throttling Netflix, but if Netflix has boxes at peering points, this seems moot.
They peer with Netflix for free then demand extra money to actually keep peering for free at proper capacity. They want money for connecting an extra cable to their router. It’s a protection racket pure and simple.
The customers of the ISP have paid to connect to the internet. Netflix isn't generating the traffic, the customers are, and if the ISP wants to serve the customers they need to provide bandwidth to the places they want to go.
Shaking down the destination, because the ISP controls the customer is wrong on many levels.
Um, when this whole debacle started, I saw articles which said that Netflix offered to pay for hardware and put more capacity in ISPs datacenters but ISPs refused and instead wanted more money to give access on the last-mile connectivity
The program is called OpenConnect [1], which has been around for a while. If you're an ISP, Netflix will ship you a beefy server for free to cache Netflix content.
Edit: I hear arguments like this and I really don't understand them. I would like to hear the reasoning behind it because it just doesn't make sense to me.
Is Netflix sending the video data from Fast.com, though?
If not then they could very well be fudging the numbers for Fast.com and not Netflix proper.
It may not be common or even legal in the US (I really don't know), but in the UK traffic shaping is commonplace, even in instances where the package has been described as "Unlimited".
ISPs aren't generally inclined to shape traffic to increase bandwidth for Netflix, though. Often they throttle it, so it's a good test to see if you'll get good performance doing something you likely care about bandwidth for (streaming Netflix).
I'd mentioned this in another comment, but I'm not sure that shaping traffic (or not) for the speed-test would mean they're treating streams the same way, especially if it's a different TLD.
I think based on the urls being requested on the site that they hit their production serving services, so it shouldn't be possible for an ISP to treat it differently (at least not without some highly advanced techniques)
> Essentially, this kind of speed test , rather than what they're really providing.
I get half the download bandwidth on Fast.com that I get using th FCC Speed Test app, so I don't think the former “only really tells you what the maximum bandwidth your ISP is able to provide you is”.
Wouldn’t an obvious initial answer to this problem be open source and self hosting. That would for variation of the host name making it harder for ISPs to target this test for either positive or negative reporting. I’m assuming the test downloads and uploads a specific resource...
I can't remember where I read this but some ISP's give preferential treatment to url's with the word " /speedtest " in it rendering the test meaningless
Due to SNI, the domain name is sent in cleartext but nothing else. So yes they could key off of "fast.com" but other sites where "/speedtest" is included would be encrypted.
In fairness, this would be true of any popular speed test, and I'm not sure of an obvious solution. Any kind of tunneling or onion routing would render the test pointless anyway, so I'm not sure of the extent to which you can ever really trust a speed test of this nature. The only really useful data for this kind of analysis is likely to come from a router with sufficiently sophisticated software that it can report on transfer rates over time (which many do), and even then, that doesn't account for scenarios where the remote connection is the bottleneck.