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Yes, and, the joke in the industry is that network speed tests are to network performance what the Volkswagen Diesel was to emission tests :). All carriers imp

Yes, and, the joke in the industry is that network speed tests are to network performance what the Volkswagen Diesel was to emission tests :). All carriers implement various types of throttling or rate limiting, for a lot of reasons (anti-ddos, cost control, etc.) But; universally, they bypass these rate controls such as Cisco PGW ADC (Application Detection and Control) and LTE eNB ABR for wireless as examples, and many others similar features that limit the rate the user actually gets. And in almost all cases, these systems are designed to allow speed tests to bypass the rate limiting. Commercial Speed tests are in no way a valid or reliable way of understanding the quality of a network service. I am a little surprised that this is breaking news on HN however. I would think this would be pretty well understood by this community? BTW. Fast.com does is not always immune to this "Volkswagen diesel" effect. The only way to know for sure is to have a VM or bare metal server someplace and do an iperf to it.

hackernewds 5y ago
even if it were well understood, it is not common knowledge. if it were common knowledge, it isn't common enough of an annoyance. the last part is definitely not correct. isn't throttling and selective benchmark fakery illegal for the same reasons VW got into trouble? one would assume FTC has a far narrower and well-fanged positioning to punish the perpetrators. what prevents this? (I think monopoly power + no designation as a ultilitt despite being one)
- zw123456 5y ago
  It's not illegal to make a speedtest that says you got some big value that is BS. It's illegal to put arsenic in a bottle and label it Vitamin C. It's not illegal to call you TV channel "something" news then just make things up. Maybe it should be illegal to call what you are saying is news when it is made up? it used to be (google fairness doctrine) Maybe there should be some regulated valid speed test, but there isn't. there are a lot of things that are legal that are unethical. there are a lot of things that are illegal that are sort of marginally unethical. But, when you elect congress people who are not very technical, probably not going to happen. Just saying. I don't have a good answer for you, just a lot of interestig observations.
throwaway290 5y ago
Same, expected better from this community. I assumed it is common knowledge that most ISPs run traffic shapers and whatnot that take into account what you are connecting to, what sort of data you send, how intensively are you using your connection over whatever time window, etc. And IMO secure DNS is not a solution. Either this ISP behavior is made illegal, or it will remain an arms race (with ISP being clear winner for most regular users).
- zw123456 5y ago
  Agree. It's funny how people I know who are "non-tech" intuitively understand that of course speed-tests are rigged, but tech people somehow think that the same place that allows Facebook pages that say that the jews have space lasers, that same place somehow is completely honest about speed tests. I am just pointing out, fake world is fake world. Just because it's says Mbps does not exempt it from fakeness. Fake is as fake does. Just interesting that people who are smart enough to understand other fake things on the internet (that maybe some people not as smart as you are not understanding). But when it is some ISP tricking you, all of a sudden, everyone is up in arms about it. It's interesting.
  - BenjiWiebe 5y ago
    Well I'm a techie, for sure when it comes to networking, and on neither our current ISP nor our previous ISP did speedtests ever report a different value than what file transfers/bandwidth monitoring showed. For that matter, I've never been able to find (and I've checked) that any particular site or connection type was actually given priority and more bandwidth. When the connection is slow, it's equally slow everywhere. When fast, equally fast everywhere. Also I get the feeling that some people think the speedtest sites themselves are giving fake numbers. Why? What would they gain from that? And why have I never ran across this, despite using many speedtest sites on multiple ISPs?
    - throwaway290 5y ago
      For what it's worth, a popular speed test site could gain kickbacks from ISPs who want their customers to see "correct" number. However, the deal is mostly not about speed test sites but about ISP behavior. ISP may maintain a registry of known speed test sites and shape traffic so that you get great results on those. Registries aside, your ISP may also be detecting and throttling BT and/or VPN traffic, shaping sustained traffic, etc., meaning you will tend to get good speed test scores but get slow speeds if you attempt to use your connection in a real-life scenario. And back to speed tests, they do tend to prefer servers located very favourably for ISP but not for you, routing to server on same ISP's network in the same city by default (this may be overridable by a tech-savvy user). I would assume they have agreements with ISPs on hosting and maintaining those servers, making any sort of manipulation a no-brainer for the ISP. All in all, I routinely get cases where a speed test reports great results but due to whatever reason I get really slow effective speeds.

hackernewds 5y ago

even if it were well understood, it is not common knowledge. if it were common knowledge, it isn't common enough of an annoyance. the last part is definitely not correct. isn't throttling and selective benchmark fakery illegal for the same reasons VW got into trouble? one would assume FTC has a far narrower and well-fanged positioning to punish the perpetrators. what prevents this? (I think monopoly power + no designation as a ultilitt despite being one)

zw123456 5y ago
It's not illegal to make a speedtest that says you got some big value that is BS. It's illegal to put arsenic in a bottle and label it Vitamin C. It's not illegal to call you TV channel "something" news then just make things up. Maybe it should be illegal to call what you are saying is news when it is made up? it used to be (google fairness doctrine) Maybe there should be some regulated valid speed test, but there isn't. there are a lot of things that are legal that are unethical. there are a lot of things that are illegal that are sort of marginally unethical. But, when you elect congress people who are not very technical, probably not going to happen. Just saying. I don't have a good answer for you, just a lot of interestig observations.

throwaway290 5y ago

Same, expected better from this community. I assumed it is common knowledge that most ISPs run traffic shapers and whatnot that take into account what you are connecting to, what sort of data you send, how intensively are you using your connection over whatever time window, etc. And IMO secure DNS is not a solution. Either this ISP behavior is made illegal, or it will remain an arms race (with ISP being clear winner for most regular users).

zw123456 5y ago
Agree. It's funny how people I know who are "non-tech" intuitively understand that of course speed-tests are rigged, but tech people somehow think that the same place that allows Facebook pages that say that the jews have space lasers, that same place somehow is completely honest about speed tests. I am just pointing out, fake world is fake world. Just because it's says Mbps does not exempt it from fakeness. Fake is as fake does. Just interesting that people who are smart enough to understand other fake things on the internet (that maybe some people not as smart as you are not understanding). But when it is some ISP tricking you, all of a sudden, everyone is up in arms about it. It's interesting.
- BenjiWiebe 5y ago
  Well I'm a techie, for sure when it comes to networking, and on neither our current ISP nor our previous ISP did speedtests ever report a different value than what file transfers/bandwidth monitoring showed. For that matter, I've never been able to find (and I've checked) that any particular site or connection type was actually given priority and more bandwidth. When the connection is slow, it's equally slow everywhere. When fast, equally fast everywhere. Also I get the feeling that some people think the speedtest sites themselves are giving fake numbers. Why? What would they gain from that? And why have I never ran across this, despite using many speedtest sites on multiple ISPs?
  - throwaway290 5y ago
    For what it's worth, a popular speed test site could gain kickbacks from ISPs who want their customers to see "correct" number. However, the deal is mostly not about speed test sites but about ISP behavior. ISP may maintain a registry of known speed test sites and shape traffic so that you get great results on those. Registries aside, your ISP may also be detecting and throttling BT and/or VPN traffic, shaping sustained traffic, etc., meaning you will tend to get good speed test scores but get slow speeds if you attempt to use your connection in a real-life scenario. And back to speed tests, they do tend to prefer servers located very favourably for ISP but not for you, routing to server on same ISP's network in the same city by default (this may be overridable by a tech-savvy user). I would assume they have agreements with ISPs on hosting and maintaining those servers, making any sort of manipulation a no-brainer for the ISP. All in all, I routinely get cases where a speed test reports great results but due to whatever reason I get really slow effective speeds.