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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?

#251

Post by tylersmith »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #232
User23 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Complete nonsense. "Net neutrality" means that there is no preferential treatment of packets based on origin or destination. Categorically false. There’s no “net neutrality” legislation enacted or proposed that doesn’t have giant and vague QoS and general network operations carve-outs.

The EFF was fairly happy with the FCC's Title II proposal back in 2015: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/02/huge-win-open-internet... In 2018 Markey and others proposed simply overturning Pai/Trump's overtuning of Title II. I don't know precisely what you're referring to ... the closest I could find was the EFF's objections to the FCC proposals from 2011 which had things like "vague QoS and general network operatio…

What does the EFF's happiness have to do with anything?

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

#252

Post by landemva »

hackernewds wrote: post #210
bzxcvbn wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Reminder that Netflix was a big proponent for axing net neutrality laws. Disagree with the premise though, Netflix has fast.com to make it transparent to customers that their NETFLIX volume is being throttled, and hence providers naturally do not throttle Netflix

>>> Reminder that Netflix was a big proponent for axing net neutrality

No, I remember the opposite.

Netflix argues for net neutrality because that forces last-mile internet providers to absorb the bandwidth costs of Netflix's business model.

https://www.theregreview.org/2021/11/10/kim-can-netflix-win-...

' In the original claim, Netflix v. SK Broadband, Netflix invoked a net neutrality argument—based on the idea that internet service providers should treat all content equally—and argued that SK Broadband would discriminate against Netflix by imposing high network usage fees. Netflix also argued that SK Broadband should cover the increased costs of network traffic since it has an obligation to provide internet services to its customers. '

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

#253

Post by Terry_Roll »

Some people in the UK may remember this problem at the end of March? https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/british-gas-eon-websites-crash-me...

So someone I know couldnt submit their meter reading at various times throughout the 31st of March so I did it for them simply by doing a tracert to the server handling the meter readings in question for Eon.

In the time it took for the tracert to complete I was able to log in as them and submit their meter reading!

Before the tracert trick, I too was having lots of problems logging in as them trying to submit their meter reading.

I did the tracert because I was going to VPN to physically get closer to their server, possible even within the same data centre and as it happens it was located on a globally recognised brands scalable cloud server so there was no reason really for these server to not handle all these meter readings!

The cynic in me thinks this was an attempt by some energy firms to consolidate their market positions by messing customers around with higher energy bills which reinforces the adage nice guys finish last, or when looking back over several months, the nice companies go bust!

So some IT staff working for Eon will be getting their comeuppance, because they didnt let their servers scale up to meet demand and the so called free british press are extremely quiet on this point, because they dont want to reduce advertising income!

There are so many legal ways to be criminal!

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

#254

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

denton-scratch wrote: post #129
DanAtC wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recursive DNS is still unencrypted and would be visible to your ISP

Yes, they can observe my queries to authoritative servers. But I didn't claim that running your own recursive DNS guaranteed privacy; I only claimed that it dispelled all problems arising from relying on someone else's DNS recursors. I happen to trust my ISP, BTW; I really just like running my own because I can observe what it's doing.

> I happen to trust my ISP, BTW

Unless you can prove otherwise you should assume they're selling you out.

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

#255

Post by jyrkesh »

rglullis wrote: post #184
jyrkesh wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of electricity in the US is charged differently during "off-peak hours". I know some EV owners who take advantage of this by scheduling when they charge their cars.

Thanks, that's a more relevant example of discriminatory pricing. I wonder though if people defending net neutrality would look at this and think "off-peak pricing is wrong, everyone should pay the same..."

Probably not many, but you're probably not going to have much luck changing the minds of people on net neutrality. Judging from your comments, you and I probably agree on the issue, but I think technical folks in particular have pretty well-entrenched opinions on the topic.

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

#256

Post by notatoad »

mrtksn wrote: post #136
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...

Strangely, fast.com still reports faster connection speeds than my broadband is supposed to offer. No, my broadband is not faster than what I'm paying for, I can see that when monitoring actual transfers(including the transfers when doing the tests). They do offer about %95 of the promised speed, not %110 that fast.com or speedtest.net measures.

the common problem with speedtests is that they're all pretty brief. whether it's speedtest.net or fast.com, it's over in a few seconds so they're not necesarily measuring the sustained speed your ISP is giving you, just the burst speed.

that being said, getting a higher burst speed still makes browsing the web a much more pleasant experience, so it's not like they're just gaming the speed tests.

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

#257

Post by kristopolous »

brahma-dev wrote: post #12

Not very scientific but you can try something that is unlikely to be whitelisted. Eg. http://134.209.196.181:8080 This is an instance of https://github.com/e7d/speedtest running on Digital Ocean in Amsterdam.

I'm in Los Angeles. My downstream is half using this tool compared to the one built into Google.

That's reasonable, actually pretty impressive for talking to Amsterdam

It's hard to really comprehend how amazing it is that I can talk to Europe at 200M/s over WiFi from my personal apartment on my smartphone while lying in bed in Los Angeles, and pay a flat rate that works out to about $2.25/day for the privilege.

It's just absurd. It's pretty easy to forget how much of a future world we live in

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

#260

Post by max23_ »

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).

TIL, I didn't know Cloudflare has one and usually use fast.com

Nice to see the tests are breakdown with more info when hovering or expanding them.

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