Ask HN: Internet magically gets faster when opening speedtest?

OpenVPN supports compression, and Private Internet Access used to enable it by default. I don't know if they do with Wireguard (now default). I also don't know if most bandwidth testers use TLS. I would actually assume not since it would add a lot of CPU on high bandwidth tests for not a lot of benefit. At any rate, at the time I noticed such was before using https had become nearly as widespread.

In my experience, OPs perception is generally correct, though perhaps less conspiratorial and nefarious than a reality of the system in place.

Across the many nodes between you and a destination, all sorts of traffic management systems move data around at different priorities. When something gets overloaded, stalled tabs are a visible system of the breakdown.

By initiating a large, typically sequential, high-speed transfer in both directions, you give each node an amount of time to recover, naturally move up the queue, and identify yourself as needing more resources. Once the speed test is moving along, everything else is 'along for the ride', to an extent.

On a home network, wifi aps are typically the biggest bottleneck, followed by underpowered or overheated routers/gateways. Depending on your isp's tech, there might be a bottleneck at a neighborhood hub, the central servers, their uplink, or more.

Anywhere along the way, this could be due to a mix of technical limits, high traffic, wear, negligence, incompetence, or intentional malice.

So you can assume your isp (or their isp) is throttling you in numerous ways. While some might be to deprioritize specific traffic or for political means, I think more is negligence, incompetence and under investment. When you identify yourself as someone needing more, or experiencing issues, it's in the isp's interest to silently resolve the issue automatically if possible (unless they think they can exploit it for a profit).

This is even more visible with the isp-owned speed tests, as you're naturally communicating to the fastest server available, plus they can shape the traffic and build the test to show you what they want you to see.

iPerf tests are a good tool for testing real world speed. As a basic tool, speedtest.net allows you to select from many test servers, often including your isp, a few local competitiors, and a close by university or tech company server. Individual numbers are less useful than a comparison between numerous tests and destinations.

A VM of smokeping or smokeping-speedtest is useful tool for monitoring these sorts of things as you can go back and look at what drops out when to get a feel conditions across the internet.

This functionality is built into Cisco IOS. Can you tell me what exactly is expensive about implementing it alongside the other configuration?

I've been using the networkQuality command on MacOS (a command line tool). It has a few interesting options so see its man page.

What you are describing is merely competition. Everyone pays the same marginal amount per kWh for a given amount of electricity—ignoring minor details like connection charges and time-of-day pricing. Yes, having more aggregate demand will tend to raise prices for everyone, but that doesn't amount to a subsidy.

Internet access is typically billed as "unlimited" so those who use it very little pay a high rate per bit transferred, while those who use it a lot pay a low rate. Some of this is due to the base cost of providing service (fixed last-mile connection costs incurred whether the line is used or not) but the rest is a subsidy from low users to high users. How much of each is debatable; the costs of home internet are largely concentrated in the last-mile connection costs rather than bandwidth and data centers, yet the bandwidth still isn't free.