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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?

#161

Post by cpv »

stepanhruda wrote: post #134
denton-scratch wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

What if I want privacy on a non-home network? Huge part of my traffic is over 5G/LTE.

There are some apps (like Intra) which allow you to connect to a built-in (cloudflare, google) or custom DoH server (your own or other providers which support DoH).

Nextdns have their own app for this as well.

For android 9 or higher there should be an option in network settings.

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

#162

Post by kortilla »

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...

This is not necessarily true. It’s trivial for an isp to exempt Speedtest.net traffic so it doesn’t get throttled while the rest of your traffic does.

It’s unlikely they would do something more complex like lifting all traffic limits once a connection to Speedtest.net opens.

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

#164

Post by starwind »

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 worked at a cable company for a while and the guy who sat behind me managed gigabit connection roll outs. He always told the techs in the field to use fast.com because it was the only one they could rely on. He knew the cable company prioritized connections to people who were checking their internet speed

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

#165

Post by elcomet »

beowulfey wrote: post #122
ComradePhil wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if you use the internet primarily for streaming. If you use the internet primarily for something else, with "net neutrality", you will be paying for the video streaming traffic (which makes up 60% of downstream traffic) even though you don't use it for that. If Netflix is required to pay the ISPs, Netflix just increases their prices and it doesn't affect internet users who don't primarily stream video.

Damn, maybe we should get rid of "electricity neutrality" too. Would be great if we just charged extra to all these bitcoin miners and marijuana grow farms so I wouldn't have to subsidize their electricity use.

You pay electricity by usage. We don't have "unlimited" electricity plans. This is why you do not subsidize Bitcoin miners.

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

#166

Post by serenitylater »

ineedasername wrote: post #133
bmitc wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

In the US we had it for a brief period of time. Then we got an FCC chair who not only took it away, but actively trolled people who were angry about it. (And that's before we even get into the issue of the public comment ballot box getting stuffed by copypasta spam in favor of killing net neutrality and wink-and-nudge blind eye turned away from it.) That's the double edged sword in the US of having executive level de…

You can have plenty of projects get done that take longer than 4 years. You will have problems getting projects done that half the country hates if it takes longer than 4 years.

This seems like a feature not a bug.

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

#167

Post by withinboredom »

kortilla wrote: post #162
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...

This is not necessarily true. It’s trivial for an isp to exempt Speedtest.net traffic so it doesn’t get throttled while the rest of your traffic does. It’s unlikely they would do something more complex like lifting all traffic limits once a connection to Speedtest.net opens.

I’m suspicious that what they’re saying is true. If so, a simple curl to the site would be all that is needed without running a full speed test.

It’d be great if they could be more methodical and track down what’s really going on. I’d also wouldn’t be surprised to see an ISP doing something like this, but at the same time, it’s much more likely to be networking issues on the consumer’s side than a malicious ISP imho.

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

#168

Post by rglullis »

JaimeThompson wrote: post #155
rglullis wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question: is there any place in the US where electricity is subsidized or has discriminatory pricing?

Electricity is routinely subsidized for large companies building new factories such as the GigaFactory Tesla is building in Nevada. You can also look up "name of area / state" and search for electrical tariffs.

Ok, but these subsidies are not based on a specific group. Some might think to be bad to subsidize Tesla, but would there be such a thing as subsidies for weed farmers?

The reason I am asking: unless there are such subsidies, it would mean that people pay proportional to their usage, so OP's joke about "electricity neutrality" would not only be wrong, it would be against net neutrality as well.

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

#169

Post by lr4444lr »

I dunno, man. I upgraded my 8 year old router and saw my speeds increase 100 fold on speed test. Thinking this was an aberration, I ran some tests doing software downloads and some DB backup restores that would give me enough testing time to rule out connection start friction or drops, and it was pretty much confirmed.

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

#170

Post by orojackson »

dboreham wrote: post #50
b20000 wrote: post #4

i 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…

Why recommend RED for client-side routers? Better to use more modern AQM approaches such as fq_codel or its successor cake [1][2]. Both of them are far easier to apply to client-side routers without fussing too much with settings: setting your download/upload bandwidth limits is enough to get nearly all of the benefits.

Other than that, you're 100% correct on Spectrum's ridiculously high buffer sizes on their end.

[1] https://tcpcc.systemsapproach.org/aqm.html#controlled-delay

[2] https://www.bufferbloat.net/projects/codel/wiki/CakeTechnica...

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