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This is beautiful. By using Netflix's actual CDN and requesting actual video files over HTTP, they're preventing ISPs from whitelisting fast.com without also wh
by nippoo 10y ago
This is beautiful. By using Netflix's actual CDN and requesting actual video files over HTTP, they're preventing ISPs from whitelisting fast.com without also whitelisting Netflix itself. Of course there'll be a game of cat-and-mouse with DPI, but it's a super-neat way of making it much harder for the ISPs to misrepresent actual video download speed...
- davidsawyer 10y agoWow, I hadn't thought of that before! That really is genius.
- IshKebab 10y agoYeah right. Just wait until a user visits fast.com and unthrottle their connection for 20 minutes. I strongly suspect some ISPs already do that with speedtest.net.
- jonknee 10y agoWell the same tech could be built into Netflix apps on various devices, no web visit necessary. They also made a command-line tool available.
- BurningFrog 10y agoStill a win for Netflix.
- nkozyra 10y agoNote to self: set up cronjob to ping speedtest.net and fast.com every 10 minutes, just in case.
- figgis 10y agoI did that, works great and with speed test cli it (did it without that at first) it's even better! https://github.com/sivel/speedtest-cli https://github.com/sivel/speedtest-cli If you are going to setup a cronjob/service for it, I suggest using the --simple flag.
- thecosas 10y agoAny before/after stats to show this made a difference in speed?
- figgis 10y agoCould you clarify the question?
- safewayclubcard 10y agoDo you have any proof that running a cron job impacts internet performance?
- figgis 10y agoI believe you replied to the wrong person. I never made that claim unless I am going crazy. speedtest-cli has a lot to offer as a tool
- Trundle 10y agoWhat did you mean "works great" for then? Just that your cron job works?
- figgis 10y agoThe actual tool I was suggesting was what I was saying works great. speedtest-cli has a lot more options available to you that a simple wget does not have. It provides cleaner information quicker. Yeah you could certainly setup a cron job using wget and have it do everything you want it too down to the bits it changes in memory... That just offers a quicker way to do all you may want too with that information.
- madeofpalk 10y agooh wow thanks for that. That's /much/ better than my DIY solution of using selenium to automate it...
- wilsonjonash 10y agoI created a basic Windows service to do this (20 mins by default). Pull requests welcome. https://github.com/jonashw/SpeedTestPingService/tree/master https://github.com/jonashw/SpeedTestPingService/tree/master
- faviouz 10y agoI've thought about that as well. Is there any evidence/reports for this?
- IshKebab 10y agoI've never seen any, but I've also never seen anyone try and find out.
- corobo 10y agoThat'd actually be great. The moment there's any evidence towards that happening I'm adding a cron script to visit fast.com every 15 minutes.
- jdavis703 10y agoMake sure you update your user agent string to the latest Chrome every couple of weeks too. (I'm assuming any ISP doing this is already doing all kinds of sneaky things).
- scrollaway 10y agoSince fast.com is https, the headers are encrypted. Correct me if I'm wrong, but unless the ISP has the CAs private keys they wouldn't be able to tell your user agent.
- kekub 10y agoThe DNS-Query or IP could be used to identify somebody accessing fast.com.
- detaro 10y agoThat still doesn't allow the ISP to tell the difference between e.g. wget and a browser via a current User-Agent-String, thanks to HTTPS. The domain is exposed over various ways, yes, but that's the point of the idea to connect to fast.com regularly to trick theoretical shaping based on it.
- pornel 10y agoList of supported ciphers is unencrypted and very UA-specific.
- MertsA 10y agoThe CAs private keys can't be used to decrypt https. All the CA does is sign your public key in a certificate that shows validity and the domain name.
- scott_karana 10y agoThat would work for speed tests, but users will still get full HD streams suddenly (and reliably) downgrading to 320p after 20 minutes. That's still more likely to reflect negatively on the ISP than Netflix, I strongly suspect ;)
- jamra 10y agoThey may also just unthrottle for the first x MB of video.
- dingo_bat 10y agoWe need a speedtest website hosted on tor :D Then ISPs won't be able to know when you visit the site.
- MertsA 10y agoTor is over an order of magnitude too slow for this to work. You might get a result, but that doesn't tell you much about the speed of your internet connection.
- kev009 10y agoAs someone who works on multi-terabit networks, this would be very difficult for most network operators to handle. Don't overestimate the competence for malice here. Usually the tactics of shitty ISPs are much more simple, such as not lighting up peering ports that their eyeball customers are in effect paying for.
- dboreham 10y agoThey don't need to : they just host a speedtest.net server on their own network, which the client will select by default.
- jlgaddis 10y agoThey could block or override the A RR for fast.com so that a client can't connect.
- corobo 10y agoThe only times I use my ISP's DNS servers are when I initially set up a computer and forget to change the settings.
- staunch 10y agoYeah but unless you tunnel your DNS traffic they can modify responses very easily. Not that this is super common yet.
- bckygldstn 10y agoIs this what DNSSEC is supposed to prevent?
- aidenn0 10y agoYes and no. It is what DNSCurve is designed to prevent.
- corobo 10y agoAt a certain point if they're going out of their way to mess with the connection I'm paying for I'll stop paying for it and go elsewhere.
- levbrie 10y agoIt is beautiful, and even if it weren't harded to misrepresent video download speeds, it's a significant step up from speedtest.net. And now there's no need to leave the command line, which is even better. That said, perhaps "making it slightly harder... to misrepresent... video download speed" is more like it.
- olejorgenb 10y agohttps://github.com/sivel/speedtest-cli https://github.com/sivel/speedtest-cli