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Ask HN: Internet magically gets faster when opening speedtest?

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Re: Ask HN: Internet magically gets faster when opening speedtest?

#81

Post by bayindirh »

I was having a similar problem at home, but it wasn't remedied by anything like that. Then, one day I've installed DNSMasq on a small SBC on my local network, then everything became blazing fast.

That day I've found out that my ADSL modem is not very good at making huge amount of DNS queries to outside world, and with a fast DNS resolver, Firefox is actually as fast as Chrome.

So, make sure that you can access your DNS servers with the speed they need to be accessed for a good network experience.

If you want to test whether this is true, make your own speedtest. Download the same Linux ISO from different mirrors, or try different speedtest mirrors to go further than your ISP.

Re: Ask HN: Internet magically gets faster when opening speedtest?

#82

Post by butz »

traceroute66 wrote: post #36

Lots of people here have already mentioned the Netflix fast.com test, which is indeed good. But also worthy of recommendation IHMO is the Cloudflare one (speed.cloudflare.com). Main reason I say that is its one of the few that measures jitter (or at least openly exposes the measurement).

Interesting, while fast.com and speed.cloudflare.com got the same download speed, upload speed was much lower on cloudflare, but cloudflare used test server, that is geographically closer.

Re: Ask HN: Internet magically gets faster when opening speedtest?

#83

Post by semi-extrinsic »

dboreham wrote: post #68

Unlikely your suspicions are correct. Provisioning high QoS to the speedtest site is common practice (see fast.com for countermeasures), but changing the entire subscriber QoS because traffic to one particular destination is detected seems like too much work and doesn't really achieve anything useful. If you are on a wireless network (either your upstream from a WISP, or internally on your own network), then I'd susp…

> and doesn't really achieve anything useful

At my previous apartment, I would get a full month rebate off my internet bill if I could document speeds considerably below average on a computer plugged in with ethernet. I could very well see an ISP with such a policy looking for nefarious ways to "fix" that money loss.

Re: Ask HN: Internet magically gets faster when opening speedtest?

#85

Post by stepanhruda »

aaomidi wrote: post #77
ranger207 wrote: post #26

Yes, this is true. This is why Netflix runs fast.com: it serves Netflix content from Netflix servers, so if ISPs want to prioritize fast.com content they'll have to prioritize Netflix content as well. Of course, that doesn't help non-Netflix sites...

I mean, it's a bit of an odd choice because it's pretty easy to detect if a user has "opened fast.com in the past few minutes"

That's why we need DNS over HTTPS and Encrypted Client Hello to become widely used. Then there would be no way of knowing, as long as Netflix uses the same infrastructure to serve fast.com and netflix.com

Re: Ask HN: Internet magically gets faster when opening speedtest?

#86

Post by bmitc »

bzxcvbn wrote: post #52
ranger207 wrote: post #26

Yes, this is true. This is why Netflix runs fast.com: it serves Netflix content from Netflix servers, so if ISPs want to prioritize fast.com content they'll have to prioritize Netflix content as well. Of course, that doesn't help non-Netflix sites...

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why net neutrality is important.

It's also an example of how it's already been lost.

Re: Ask HN: Internet magically gets faster when opening speedtest?

#87

Post by _jsnk »

mlyle wrote: post #53
UI_at_80x24 wrote: post #20

I was on the phone with a buddy trying to troubleshoot Local file transfer speeds vs Speedtest results. Speedtest kept reporting 100Mb/s range speeds (the tier he was paying for). Local file transfers however were stuck in the 1MB/s range. After some questions and troubleshooting he discovered that he had used a 10Mb/s hub instead of a 1Gb/s switch that was sitting right next to it. A simple mixup. His internet conne…

> Do not trust them for accurate results. Ookla speedtest properly transfers data and divides to find throughput-- both with the website, the GUI app, and their CLI program. The open source speedtest-cli that uses their infrastructure is hampered by only one connection and can't seem to ever report higher than 300mbps. Fast.com is ... a little optimistic about transients getting transfers started and sometimes report…

> speedtest-cli ... can't seem to ever report higher than 300mbps.

I routinely get 700-900Mbps reported using speedtest-cli from centurylink fiber. My bottleneck is the CPU on my router running openwrt.

Re: Ask HN: Internet magically gets faster when opening speedtest?

#88

Post by mmastrac »

mlyle wrote: post #53
UI_at_80x24 wrote: post #20

I was on the phone with a buddy trying to troubleshoot Local file transfer speeds vs Speedtest results. Speedtest kept reporting 100Mb/s range speeds (the tier he was paying for). Local file transfers however were stuck in the 1MB/s range. After some questions and troubleshooting he discovered that he had used a 10Mb/s hub instead of a 1Gb/s switch that was sitting right next to it. A simple mixup. His internet conne…

> Do not trust them for accurate results. Ookla speedtest properly transfers data and divides to find throughput-- both with the website, the GUI app, and their CLI program. The open source speedtest-cli that uses their infrastructure is hampered by only one connection and can't seem to ever report higher than 300mbps. Fast.com is ... a little optimistic about transients getting transfers started and sometimes report…

I'm seeing gigabit(-ish) via speedtest-cli:

   Speedtest by Ookla

     Server: TELUS Mobility - Calgary, AB (id = 17555)
        ISP: TELUS
    Latency:     0.50 ms   (0.12 ms jitter)
   Download:   938.58 Mbps (data used: 422.8 MB)
     Upload:   919.90 Mbps (data used: 959.8 MB)
  Packet Loss: Not available.
FTTH, Ubiquiti EdgeSwitch -> UniFi Dream Machine Pro SE via 10G link -> Nokia ONT.

I _do_ get limited to around 300mbps if my Mikrotik is in the mix and using CPU for routing.

Yeah, my home network is overkill but it's a cheaper hobby than other ones might be, hah.

Re: Ask HN: Internet magically gets faster when opening speedtest?

#89

Post by FredPret »

zorr wrote: post #64
FredPret wrote: post #18

I wonder if one could route all traffic through a speedtest site

That's basically what Netflix does with its fast.com service. This could be an interesting business model for a VPN service. Host a popular speedtest and VPN endpoints on the same IP's. The challenge is to make the speedtest popular enough so ISP's will optimize for it.

It would be cool if all our devices could talk to one another directly in a huge mesh network with no ISPs whatsoever. I do so detest the usual ISP user experience

Re: Ask HN: Internet magically gets faster when opening speedtest?

#90

Post by gruez »

aaomidi wrote: post #77
ranger207 wrote: post #26

Yes, this is true. This is why Netflix runs fast.com: it serves Netflix content from Netflix servers, so if ISPs want to prioritize fast.com content they'll have to prioritize Netflix content as well. Of course, that doesn't help non-Netflix sites...

I mean, it's a bit of an odd choice because it's pretty easy to detect if a user has "opened fast.com in the past few minutes"

1. Add a https://fast.com/pixel.png"/ >on netflix.com

2. ???

3. profit

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