If you want more data points, configure your egress traffic to go through various VPNs to see whether you get the same results. It’s easy enough to do from a computer or a supported mobile device, if you’re willing to spend a few bucks trying a few different services out. I believe several of them offer free trials.
Ask HN: Internet magically gets faster when opening speedtest?
101–110 of 356 posts
Re: Ask HN: Internet magically gets faster when opening speedtest?
#102I was having issues with slow load times, high latency, dropped packets, the works. I had been profiling it and logging my bandwidth with (iirc) iperf on a raspi, over the past 48h. When I felt like I had collected enough data, I called Spectrum to give em a piece of my mind. One of the first things they had me do was use their online speedtest. Came up with 100Mbps...I had been getting 10 on iperf.
Suddenly, my traffic quality was mysteriously better.
No idea what was actually going on, but the whole thing was a bit sus.
I definitely recommend using your own server and profiling tools if you are suspicious of speedtest.
Re: Ask HN: Internet magically gets faster when opening speedtest?
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ha! I'm currently down the rabbithole of trying to understand why when connected through nordvpn, i'm seeing ~5% faster download and ~10% lower ping latency to speedtest.net when connected to an in-country vpn endpoint. Does not compute. Compression? I can't explain the lower ping, traffic shaping?
> I can't explain the lower ping, traffic shaping? Better routes. Most latency on the internet is not due to c.
Classic story where this is related: https://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail.html
tl;dr timeout was sufficiently low and user sufficiently skilled to work out his emails could be delivered only within 500 miles
Re: Ask HN: Internet magically gets faster when opening speedtest?
#104i am using spectrum business and i’ve been paying close to $200/m. this is in LA in a residential building. the speed looks good when i run a test but i notice that page loading times are total shit at least initially. if i start a download for a video game that ramps up quickly in speed but i actually don’t need that. what i really want is very fast resolving and page loading, which is different than just large down…
My experience with Spectrum is that they allow a large accumulation of in-transit packets when traffic rate is near the provisioned capacity. Some people call this "buffer bloat". Some background: If you study traffic shaping, you'll discover that TCP behaves poorly if packets are simply dropped when throughput approaches the limit (congestion collapse). So traffic shaping usually _delays_ packets rather than droppin…
thanks. would you recommend building a linux router then or buying one off the shelf ready to go?
Re: Ask HN: Internet magically gets faster when opening speedtest?
#105i am using spectrum business and i’ve been paying close to $200/m. this is in LA in a residential building. the speed looks good when i run a test but i notice that page loading times are total shit at least initially. if i start a download for a video game that ramps up quickly in speed but i actually don’t need that. what i really want is very fast resolving and page loading, which is different than just large down…
It sounds like you want lower latency?
i guess so, i want instant page loads, i care less whether transfer is 4 or 5 MB/s
Re: Ask HN: Internet magically gets faster when opening speedtest?
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
If you're a web developer, you owe it to your users to add this to your site even if you have no connection with Netflix or Fast.com. Randomize the image name every time to avoid caching - it doesn't matter if the image isn't found.
Re: Ask HN: Internet magically gets faster when opening speedtest?
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> I'm seeing gigabit(-ish) via speedtest-cli: You're using their cli client, not the open source one. Below, first their "speedtest" and then the open source "speedtest-cli" mlyle@brazen:~ $ ./speedtest Speedtest by Ookla Server: Cloudflare - San Jose, CA (id = 44932) ISP: Frontier Communications Latency: 12.10 ms (1.29 ms jitter) Download: 953.32 Mbps (data used: 1.0 GB ) Upload: 891.89 Mbps (data used: 1.1 GB ) Pac…
Practically the same. Perhaps it's a server selection issue?
Selecting best server based on ping...
Hosted by iTel.com (iTel Networks Inc) (Calgary, AB) [3.20 km]: 2.275 ms
Testing download speed................................................................................
Download: 931.69 Mbit/s
Testing upload speed................................................................................................
Upload: 854.01 Mbit/sRe: Ask HN: Internet magically gets faster when opening speedtest?
#108related question: spectrum pushes fiber where i am located, but there is no way to bring fiber into our residential unit/building. i guess they mean fiber to a local hub or something, then cable to our unit. isn’t that what they do anyway, and unless you have fiber into the unit, offers no improvement?
Re: Ask HN: Internet magically gets faster when opening speedtest?
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'm seeing gigabit(-ish) via speedtest-cli: You're using their cli client, not the open source one. Below, first their "speedtest" and then the open source "speedtest-cli" mlyle@brazen:~ $ ./speedtest Speedtest by Ookla Server: Cloudflare - San Jose, CA (id = 44932) ISP: Frontier Communications Latency: 12.10 ms (1.29 ms jitter) Download: 953.32 Mbps (data used: 1.0 GB ) Upload: 891.89 Mbps (data used: 1.1 GB ) Pac…
Practically the same. Perhaps it's a server selection issue? Selecting best server based on ping... Hosted by iTel.com (iTel Networks Inc) (Calgary, AB) [3.20 km]: 2.275 ms Testing download speed................................................................................ Download: 931.69 Mbit/s Testing upload speed................................................................................................ Upl…
Interesting. I consistently get garbage results with speedtest-cli (across multiple machines and network connections) and good results with speedtest's own.
On the pi, I suspect it's running out of CPU--
real 0m9.877s
user 0m2.737s
sys 0m5.595s
Re: Ask HN: Internet magically gets faster when opening speedtest?
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
"Need" is too strong. Without going into the arguments against DoH, we don't "need" it, because there is an alternative: run your own recursive DNS. That should be something that a consumer could switch on or off. A default install of Unbound, for example, seems to /just work/. Downside: if you have any kind of home network, running your own recursive DNS probably implies running your own DHCP, which isn't normally a…
Recursive DNS is still unencrypted and would be visible to your ISP