I seem to be unable to view the blog post in Firefox, it automatically goes to https which doesn't load.
Maybe netflix messed up their HSTS settings at some point in the past?
Building fast.com
21–30 of 180 posts
Re: Building fast.com
#22First, I thought why another speed test, then I saw that they link their results directly to speedtest.net (the reference) and finally, I realized that fast.com is so much faster in detecting the download speed (but lacks upload and ping). Not bad. EDIT: And they secured a fantastic domain.
I think the point was they conduct the speed test from the same servers that deliver video content. So ISPs can't throttle video streaming without it showing up in this speed test.
Re: Building fast.com
#231. When will someone build a tool like this and then open up the measurements data? A speed-measuring tool would be infinitely more useful if we could investigate the results beyond just our one device for one test. A question I really want to be able to answer: which ISP offers the fastest service in my area? fast.com and speedtest.net could easily answer this question if they made the data available. 2. I think tes…
We display our data publicly on the map. http://www.broadbandspeedchecker.co.uk/broadband_speed_in_my... Granted we do not have many results in the US (maybe ballpark 200k+ results in last 6 months), still you should be able to find some results in your area.
200k is a pretty good sample size is it not? Even with multiple providers.
Most election/political polls use far less data and very big decisions get made because of them.
Re: Building fast.com
#24Fast.com is a lot slower than both speedtest.net and http://speedtest.dslreports.com/speedtest for me... I get 78mbps on fast.com and 350 on the other two. Not sure what's going on? Maybe they don't have servers near me, I'm in Paris, France.
Perhaps that is a reflection of your provider's ability to serve bandwidth to Netflix servers?
Re: Building fast.com
#251. When will someone build a tool like this and then open up the measurements data? A speed-measuring tool would be infinitely more useful if we could investigate the results beyond just our one device for one test. A question I really want to be able to answer: which ISP offers the fastest service in my area? fast.com and speedtest.net could easily answer this question if they made the data available. 2. I think tes…
RE #2: fast.com has me at 1/3 of what speedtest.net has me for download.
Re: Building fast.com
#26First, I thought why another speed test, then I saw that they link their results directly to speedtest.net (the reference) and finally, I realized that fast.com is so much faster in detecting the download speed (but lacks upload and ping). Not bad. EDIT: And they secured a fantastic domain.
Since they took this precious domain, I was wondering about the purchase price and if it was worth to buy this awesome domain—we are talking here about a mid six digit at least, rather seven digits.
Then, I checked how much traffic speedtest.net is getting on SimilarWeb: wow, 150m visits per month, I didn't know that speed testing can be so popular.
Conclusion: Yes, it was right to buy this domain and if fast.com gets a large part of speedtest.net's traffic in the long term, Netflix has a neat free Marketing channel.
Re: Building fast.com
#27First, I thought why another speed test, then I saw that they link their results directly to speedtest.net (the reference) and finally, I realized that fast.com is so much faster in detecting the download speed (but lacks upload and ping). Not bad. EDIT: And they secured a fantastic domain.
I think the point was they conduct the speed test from the same servers that deliver video content. So ISPs can't throttle video streaming without it showing up in this speed test.
Makes sense but wouldn't they then use the netflix domain? Something like netflix.com/fast? I could image that if providers throttle it would be a mix of IPs and domain.
Re: Building fast.com
#28First, I thought why another speed test, then I saw that they link their results directly to speedtest.net (the reference) and finally, I realized that fast.com is so much faster in detecting the download speed (but lacks upload and ping). Not bad. EDIT: And they secured a fantastic domain.
Why not also measure upload speed? I get it, it's because their business model only requires people to download stuff. The current state of the internet is much like the old days, where only big corporations had the ability to "broadcast".
So I'm not enthusiastic at all.
Re: Building fast.com
#29Speed testing is a good starting point, but on my LTE connection (rural area) I find the latency to be very contributor to overall experience. Especially that once the link is saturated the latency shoots through the roof (up to x10). I wish there were some tools for testing more complex use cases.
I'm working on an project to solve this type of issue. What we do is put test servers throughout your provider's network and then provide a browser frontend that will test your connection (throughput+latency) to each point on your provider's network on your way out to the Internet. I would love to come up with a way to do this without requiring the provider to install anything, but so far that doesn't seem technically feasible. One of the main problems is that so much of last mile networks is now layer 2, so traceroutes aren't particularly helpful at narrowing down the network segment causing the problem.
The good news is that many of the smaller providers (where they exist - maybe your LTE provider is one?) are very excited about adding something like this to their network. Where the incumbents would rather just hide problems from you to keep you locked in, the smaller providers are very motivated to keep you on their network. They're often overworked and resource strapped - so a system that will help them narrow down the source of network problems and reduce truck rolls is usually very exciting to them.
Re: Building fast.com
#30Fast.com is a lot slower than both speedtest.net and http://speedtest.dslreports.com/speedtest for me... I get 78mbps on fast.com and 350 on the other two. Not sure what's going on? Maybe they don't have servers near me, I'm in Paris, France.
My results were similar on DSL:
Speedtest 12.6 Mbps
Fast.com 13.0 Mbps
Speedtest 40.0 Mbps
Fast.com 73.0 Mbps