Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Accenture to acquire Ookla

newsroom.accenture.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 186 posts

Re: Accenture to acquire Ookla

#121

Post by UqWBcuFx6NV4r »

progforlyfe wrote: post #6

that's nuts, unless I'm missing something, it doesn't seem like those products are that mind blowingly complex... wow. Makes we want to try building my own for the hell of it. Downdetector in fact just seems to be a website catalog with essentially a guestbook and hit counter...

The fact that you think that the code is all that material here is exactly why you aren’t the person to be doing this. Go right ahead.

ZIR SV culture has built multiple generations of nerds that think that they can just effortlessly become billionaires. Ridiculous brain rot.

Re: Accenture to acquire Ookla

#122

Post by [deleted] »

Raed667 wrote: post #62
forcer wrote: post #44

I am not sure why this old news is surfacing here today but I can give my 2 cents, since I sold speedchecker.com last year and were directly competing with Ookla. The main business is selling the data. You use Speedtest.net to troubleshoot your connection but metrics captured with the test alongside location data give telcos invaluable insights on where they should improve their networks. Telcos pay 6 figures annuall…

How come ISPs aren't providing that data internally from observing their own traffic ?

[deleted]

Re: Accenture to acquire Ookla

#123

Post by bigfatkitten »

forcer wrote: post #55
andix wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The partner network of Speedtest is also impressive. I don't know how many speed tests they need to handle in parallel, but usually it's always enough to do speed tests up to 5-10 Gbit/s. With more and more fiber connections also latency becomes very relevant. Otherwise the tests would be meaningless. Speedtest manages to measure less than 1ms latency on my fiber connection.

Once you have a good amount of users testing, its not that difficult to get free servers from the ISPs. The secret is that on-net servers show testers better performance than off-net so every ISP wants to contribute the speed test server. If they dont do it they are shooting themselves in the foot by routing their traffic to competitor networks and getting test results behind their peers. Whats even worst then your c…

And some cheeky traffic shaping by your competitors to make your results look worse than they should be.

Re: Accenture to acquire Ookla

#124

Post by bigfatkitten »

themafia wrote: post #112
mbesto wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but it took me 18 years to grow the user base , figure out entreprise sales strategy and exit. The audience here has never wanted to admit that the codebase doesn't really matter. Now that codebases can be created in a weekend, people are opening their eyes to this sentiment - the hard part is the sales, the code is easy.

> The audience here has never wanted to admit that the codebase doesn't really matter. Are we talking about speed testing websites or the code that controls space vehicles? Perhaps extreme generalities do not provide useful insights. > Now that codebases can be created in a weekend Now that corporations are whitewashing copyright off of code so you can steal it without conscience. > people are opening their eyes to t…

> Engineering is the discipline.

And even that is very rare in the field of software development.

Re: Accenture to acquire Ookla

#125

Post by qsxfthnkp2322 »

qsxfthnkp2322 wrote: post #90
athrowaway3z wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you ever fear that any big player like Google, Apple, Valve (though fewer mobiles), Meta, OpenAI (nowadays), etc decide to get involved?

Apple has their own internal speed app due to privacy concerns.

https://theapplewiki.com/wiki/Speed

Re: Accenture to acquire Ookla

#126

Post by elxr »

mbesto wrote: post #109
forcer wrote: post #44

I am not sure why this old news is surfacing here today but I can give my 2 cents, since I sold speedchecker.com last year and were directly competing with Ookla. The main business is selling the data. You use Speedtest.net to troubleshoot your connection but metrics captured with the test alongside location data give telcos invaluable insights on where they should improve their networks. Telcos pay 6 figures annuall…

> but it took me 18 years to grow the user base , figure out entreprise sales strategy and exit. The audience here has never wanted to admit that the codebase doesn't really matter. Now that codebases can be created in a weekend, people are opening their eyes to this sentiment - the hard part is the sales, the code is easy.

Great code is still not easy. Choosing the right stack/libraries/billing and getting everything to work together (for cheap) is still something barely 10% of devs can actually realistically do.

Sales is hard, yeah, but look at everyone claiming to be building something amazing and it ends up 9 months behind schedule or just being an buggy, untested version of something that already exists in the market.

Re: Accenture to acquire Ookla

#127

Post by Suppafly »

conception wrote: post #35
simonw wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there some legal reason to scatter announcements with that many ® symbols, or do they just do it for style reasons / because they think it makes the announcement look more impressive?

Legal. Gotta protect your trademarks.

To a degree, but I've never seen anything requiring you to show a mark literally every time it's mentioned.

Re: Accenture to acquire Ookla

#128

Post by Suppafly »

thayne wrote: post #46
eddythompson80 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course they are not complex. They do have a network effect though. If you go to your local ISP and say “hey, my 500mbps plan is only doing 100mbps on Speedtest.net”, they’ll “fix it” (usually by working with Ookla to put an edge endpoint on their network) If you tell the “hey frankyspeeddetect.com isn’t doing my 500mbps” they’ll tell you to it’s an issue with that random website. ISPs and services reach out to Ook…

When I used a major cable ISP, often my connection seemed slow, so I'd go to speedtest.com. The speedtest would be fine... and then I would magically have faster network performance again. It happened enough times that I'm suspicious the ISP had some way to detect if you run a speedtest, and then prioritized traffic to that customer.

>When I used a major cable ISP, often my connection seemed slow, so I'd go to speedtest.com. The speedtest would be fine... and then I would magically have faster network performance again.

Yeah, I suspect you could script it to do it daily. They definitely seem to deprioritize traffic from people that don't complain.

Re: Accenture to acquire Ookla

#129

Post by archb »

jedberg wrote: post #87
arikrahman wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All it takes to defeat the business model is https://openspeedtest.com/

That test was totally inaccurate for me. It got the download right but upload was only 1/12 of my rated speed and 1/12 of what all the other tests (and my actual experience) tell me.

Same for me. The download speed was fine, but upload speed was 1.75x the actual one.

Re: Accenture to acquire Ookla

#130

Post by taneq »

forcer wrote: post #44

I am not sure why this old news is surfacing here today but I can give my 2 cents, since I sold speedchecker.com last year and were directly competing with Ookla. The main business is selling the data. You use Speedtest.net to troubleshoot your connection but metrics captured with the test alongside location data give telcos invaluable insights on where they should improve their networks. Telcos pay 6 figures annuall…

> I coded my first speed checker over the weekend in 2008 but it took me 18 years to grow the user base , figure out entreprise sales strategy and exit. Its not easy as it seems.

The biggest surprise (imo) when you start a business is how little of running a business is actually directly about the product. Having a product is essential, sure, and having a good product is nice, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Post reply on HN