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FCC Asks Americans to Use FCC Speed Test App to Measure U.S. Broadband Availability
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I'd like to see Apple, Google, and Microsoft getting behind the effort for better broadband more aggressively. Are they even doing anything? It's the backbone of their business and directly determines the experience of their products. I guess Google kinda tried....
SamKnows is reputable. They are a third-party organization that has been operating for years to test broadband speed claims. I have a SamKnows "whitebox", a wireless router that has been modified to remove its wifi capabilities and instead run automatic, periodic speed, jitter, ping, and packet loss tests. I've been operating it for almost six years and it helped me to identify a cable degradation issue at my old house.
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It might also put your mind at ease to know that SamKnows is an organization headquartered in the UK and is not connected to the US government (i.e. "Uncle Sam"). The name originates from Sam Crawford, the developer who began the company. https://www.samknows.com/company/history
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It’s kind of useless to make this an app for a smartphone if the purpose is to measure wired connections. A smartphone will always be on WiFi (or cellular) and never wired. Yet, many WiFi setups are very much lacking and don’t cause speed issues for the user that have nothing to do with the provider.
The program was expanded to include wireless, they are looking at both.
Or conspiracy theories aside, they run their own speed test servers. Why would I as an ISP trust results from a server with unknown resources for the speed test server. I get 100% of the advertised speed of my ISP, largely independent of which server I run the test against.
No. He's not wrong. The FCC Speed Test app is garbage. It's 4 years old and last updated 4 months ago... boy developer SamKnows...
So the FCC bought some guys product and put their name on it and it's got issues... European date format and the data charts post a day in the past...
Maybe there's an update that will be released? (Hope they didn't pay this guy too much money.)
Some ISPs are doing extensive traffic shaping when you connect to the major speed test providers, so this data wouldn't provide any practical use to the FCC.
Speedtest data is pretty useless since Comcast and others host a server in each market. I don't care how fast my cable or fiber internet is to the office downtown. Without solid network peering I still can't get anything at a good rate. Right now I have gig with Centurylink, but it's been getting slower month over month as they bring on more customers. Their network is garbage even if my uplink to their CO downtown is great.
Probably should have put a fresh coat of paint on it before the national press release.
How does an ISP go about paying for favorable speedtest results?
That is not an option. ISP's or anyone for that matter can host their own speedtest server. Speedtests vary between servers for multiple reasons. 1, the testing server could be overwhelmed or under sized for what its doing. 2, the server you are testing through could be on the other side of a congested link that your ISP has no control over and hence slow speeds to that server and not the closer one.
That was my thoughts too. People could have gigabit tier service but **** wireless in their house and the speedtests would reflect the crappy wireless and not their gigabit tier service.
It doesn't run continuously on its own. You need to tell it to run when you want it to run. The app just keeps track of how much data it's used so it can give you a heads up before you run the test if you have used all of what you have allocated to the app.
Because you’ve bought into the narrative that the government is one giant conspiracy out to control you
It’s the government. Do you think they don’t have lots of data on you already?
How fast your internet connection is. Is probably their most benign data point.
Did you take your meds this morning? The article clearly states the app is available for iPhone and iPad. There is NO Mac version.
