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If I were a major, anticompetitive ISP, the minute I found out about this tool, I would figure out how to fingerprint it, and then artificially inflate results

by fouric 6y ago

If I were a major, anticompetitive ISP, the minute I found out about this tool, I would figure out how to fingerprint it, and then artificially inflate results by giving priority and bonus bandwidth to its tests. What is this app doing to prevent that? I don't see any mention of any awareness that ISPs have historically gamed speed tests and what countermeasures FCC has taken. Idea: would it be possible to built an app that measured the speed of connections for other apps by using the platforms' VPN APIs to create a dummy VPN service that just measured bandwidth/latency?

Mordisquitos 6y ago
> If I were a major, anticompetitive ISP, the minute I found out about this tool, I would figure out how to fingerprint it, and then artificially inflate results by giving priority and bonus bandwidth to its tests. AKA the Volkswagen strategy.
sliken 6y ago
Heh, sure, but that already happens with various bandwidth sites. I've tried to replicate various bandwidth tests and failed miserably. Then tried a bandwidth test over VPN (to hide it from the ISP) and then got numbers matching my real world tests. It works the opposite way as well, when Comcast was blackmailing Netflix you'd get terrible bandwidth, unless you used a VPN to hide your traffic.
- Mordisquitos 6y ago
  >It works the opposite way as well, when Comcast was blackmailing Netflix you'd get terrible bandwidth, unless you used a VPN to hide your traffic. This bit here is the real smoking gun. Without it, the fact that you got worse bandwidth test results when using a VPN is wholly unconvincing—who's to say that it wasn't due to your VPN's own limitations?
  - notamy 6y ago
    I think you might have misread -- it's saying that the bandwidth was awful UNLESS using a VPN, i.e. no VPN was the slower option.
- Daneel_ 6y ago
  Google has a speed test built in now, which is difficult for ISPs to carve out. Just google for ‘speed test’ and it shows up as a card at the top of the page.
Buraksr 6y ago
I guess the benefit of google’s speed test is that if ISPs try to artificially speed it up, they run a good chance of accidentally increasing the bandwidth of youtube.
- 4lun 6y ago
  I believe Netflix does this with their fast.com speed test
adamcstephens 6y ago
Likely the ISPs that are doing the worst job are limited on the edge, not centrally. Much harder to game the numbers when the connection to a house is awful.
yabones 6y ago
Fingerprinting something like this would be trivial, they've probably already done it. Using the ja3 library [1] you can make pretty good deterministic TLS connection fingerprints, and that works fine for traffic that you can't decrypt. IDS/IPS software has used similar methods to identify and block encrypted traffic for some time now. [1] https://github.com/salesforce/ja3 https://github.com/salesforce/ja3

by fouric 6y ago

Mordisquitos 6y ago

> If I were a major, anticompetitive ISP, the minute I found out about this tool, I would figure out how to fingerprint it, and then artificially inflate results by giving priority and bonus bandwidth to its tests. AKA the Volkswagen strategy.

sliken 6y ago

Heh, sure, but that already happens with various bandwidth sites. I've tried to replicate various bandwidth tests and failed miserably. Then tried a bandwidth test over VPN (to hide it from the ISP) and then got numbers matching my real world tests. It works the opposite way as well, when Comcast was blackmailing Netflix you'd get terrible bandwidth, unless you used a VPN to hide your traffic.

Mordisquitos 6y ago
>It works the opposite way as well, when Comcast was blackmailing Netflix you'd get terrible bandwidth, unless you used a VPN to hide your traffic. This bit here is the real smoking gun. Without it, the fact that you got worse bandwidth test results when using a VPN is wholly unconvincing—who's to say that it wasn't due to your VPN's own limitations?
- notamy 6y ago
  I think you might have misread -- it's saying that the bandwidth was awful UNLESS using a VPN, i.e. no VPN was the slower option.
Daneel_ 6y ago
Google has a speed test built in now, which is difficult for ISPs to carve out. Just google for ‘speed test’ and it shows up as a card at the top of the page.

Buraksr 6y ago

I guess the benefit of google’s speed test is that if ISPs try to artificially speed it up, they run a good chance of accidentally increasing the bandwidth of youtube.

4lun 6y ago
I believe Netflix does this with their fast.com speed test

adamcstephens 6y ago

Likely the ISPs that are doing the worst job are limited on the edge, not centrally. Much harder to game the numbers when the connection to a house is awful.

yabones 6y ago

Fingerprinting something like this would be trivial, they've probably already done it. Using the ja3 library [1] you can make pretty good deterministic TLS connection fingerprints, and that works fine for traffic that you can't decrypt. IDS/IPS software has used similar methods to identify and block encrypted traffic for some time now. [1] https://github.com/salesforce/ja3 https://github.com/salesforce/ja3