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Smart. With a bit of SEO/marketing, this will become the way consumers judge their internet quality. If connection quality = ping to cloudflare then that puts c

Smart. With a bit of SEO/marketing, this will become the way consumers judge their internet quality. If connection quality = ping to cloudflare then that puts cloudflare in a very strong negotiating position for peering agreements etc.

jeroenhd 3y ago
There are decent alternatives for this. Fast.com is hosted by Netflix, making them an excellent speedtest to check for service throttling. Google has a speedtest as well (Google "speed test" and it'll show a button). The more of these tests start appearing, the better.
- vijaykodam 3y ago
  Google partners with Measurement Lab (M-Lab) to run this test.
  - Thoreandan 3y ago
    I liked the detailed output of the M-LAB tests, unfortunately the amount of data has fallen over time. They'd also check for traffic shaping / blocking once upon a time. I think the project lasted only as long as the grad students who wrote it were there.
- Aachen 3y ago
  > hosted by Netflix, making them an excellent speedtest to check for service throttling That's exactly what the person above you meant about Cloudflare, right? By using the Netflix speedtest as a benchmark, you're promoting good connectivity to another commercial entity (for good or for bad, I don't mean to judge, just stating)
  - jeroenhd 3y ago
    Netflix and Google (YouTube) are commercial entities that ISPs will intentionally throttle. Reduce the bandwidth for all Netflix servers to 5mbps and suddenly you're stuck watching at 480p or 720p, even if the connection can handle multiple 4k streams. This is abused for "unlimited data" subscriptions that aren't unlimited when you actually try to consume more data than a standard subscription would allow you to. Of course that's completely illegal in countries with net neutrality laws, but not every country has those. I can't think of a reason why a shitty ISP would throttle Cloudflare, as Cloudflare mostly hosts small files. As an ISP you want customers to think websites are nice and fast, because if only Netflix is slow, surely the problem lies with Netflix, right? If speedtest.net says you have gigabit, Cloudflare says the same, and fast.com is giving you 5mbps, your ISP is messing with your bandwidth. It could be that Netflix has technical issues, but you'd read about those. That's why these tests are useful, and why we need more like them.
    - Aachen 3y ago
      > Netflix and Google (YouTube) are commercial entities that ISPs will intentionally throttle. In Nederland? I only heard these stories from the USA, and then specifically about monopoly ISPs with Netflix as trial target to see if they can get extra money from them
      - jeroenhd 3y ago
        We're safe from this nonsense here in the Netherlands ever since KPN tried to blocked Skype on their network and upset legilators, and the EU has had net neutrality law for a while now. However, with most of the internet being developed over in the USA, the internet as a whole gets better with these features. I haven't caught any real ISP here (only train/public WiFi). I don't trust Dutch ISPs to follow the law so I do run these checks every now and then. At least one American mobile carrier overtly advertises "5G" with "unlimited data" followed by "DVD quality (480p) standard" video quality, but not every carrier in every country will be that direct.
- unsupp0rted 3y ago
  I've found Fast.com gamed sometimes when traveling in Asia/Europe, in the sense the ISP prioritizes Netflix traffic but normal traffic never gets within 20% of that Fast.com download speed or has much higher latency or something...? With Cloudflare I'm guessing it's a more balanced measure.
  - capableweb 3y ago
    Huh, that's strange, I usually see the opposite when I'm out and about (particularly in Europe/South America). Popular services like Netflix are throttled but downloading huge blobs from my own servers is much faster.
    - Aachen 3y ago
      Here in Europe it's all equally fast. I don't remember ever having a throttled service, that sounds like a page out of the dystopian scenarios produced in the era where net neutrality legislation was being proposed/promoted ten years ago or something. There were rumors back then that bittorrent was being throttled (and corresponding protocol obfuscation and port changing) but I never had that myself
      - jgtrosh 3y ago
        Fast.com was created specifically to pinpoint the throttling that was actively applied to Netflix in many occurrences back then. It seems to be mostly gone, especially since streaming video now accounts for >50% of web traffic you can't easily throttle it and hope no one notices.
        Aachen 3y ago
        In the USA specifically, I thought? Or which other regions has that happened in? I remember Comcast specifically having a monopoly in many areas and being able to pressure Netflix into getting money from both sides of the fiber (consumers and service providers)
      - 3y ago
- secondcoming 3y ago
  I find fast.com massively overestimates my speeds. Interestingly, if you hide the tab running their speedtest you get even higher speeds.
  - dspillett 3y ago
    > I find fast.com massively overestimates my speeds. I find fast.com more accurate than most, going by the throughput I see to/from other resources, particularly for upstream rates (which some, including Cloudflair, seem to significantly under-measure). Of course this may vary depending on line type (FTTC, “up to 67Mbit down n& 17 up”, generally seeing more like 50/12) and location (due to differences in local network conditions and peering between you & the speedtest) to I'm not surprised to hear you see the results quite different to those I experience. > if you hide the tab running their speedtest you get even higher speeds I suspect this is due to your browser throttling CPU use and timer granularity for background or occluded tabs⁰ reducing the accuracy of the readings, if the code isn't working to mitigate the effect of these throttles on the calculations. -- [0] refs: https://blog.chromium.org/2020/11/tab-throttling-and-more-performance.html https://blog.chromium.org/2020/11/tab-throttling-and-more-pe..., https://www.reddit.com/r/incremental_games/comments/jefviz/fyi_how_to_disable_timer_throttling_on_google/ https://www.reddit.com/r/incremental_games/comments/jefviz/f..., and many more
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
ehhthing 3y ago
> then that puts cloudflare in a very strong negotiating position for peering agreements etc. Ideally settlement peering would exist for everyone. Cloudflare, like every other sane provider prefers IX routes over PNI since it's less expensive for everyone involved. There really shouldn't be a discussion about whether peering should be settlement free or not.

jeroenhd 3y ago

There are decent alternatives for this. Fast.com is hosted by Netflix, making them an excellent speedtest to check for service throttling. Google has a speedtest as well (Google "speed test" and it'll show a button). The more of these tests start appearing, the better.

vijaykodam 3y ago
Google partners with Measurement Lab (M-Lab) to run this test.
- Thoreandan 3y ago
  I liked the detailed output of the M-LAB tests, unfortunately the amount of data has fallen over time. They'd also check for traffic shaping / blocking once upon a time. I think the project lasted only as long as the grad students who wrote it were there.
Aachen 3y ago
> hosted by Netflix, making them an excellent speedtest to check for service throttling That's exactly what the person above you meant about Cloudflare, right? By using the Netflix speedtest as a benchmark, you're promoting good connectivity to another commercial entity (for good or for bad, I don't mean to judge, just stating)
- jeroenhd 3y ago
  Netflix and Google (YouTube) are commercial entities that ISPs will intentionally throttle. Reduce the bandwidth for all Netflix servers to 5mbps and suddenly you're stuck watching at 480p or 720p, even if the connection can handle multiple 4k streams. This is abused for "unlimited data" subscriptions that aren't unlimited when you actually try to consume more data than a standard subscription would allow you to. Of course that's completely illegal in countries with net neutrality laws, but not every country has those. I can't think of a reason why a shitty ISP would throttle Cloudflare, as Cloudflare mostly hosts small files. As an ISP you want customers to think websites are nice and fast, because if only Netflix is slow, surely the problem lies with Netflix, right? If speedtest.net says you have gigabit, Cloudflare says the same, and fast.com is giving you 5mbps, your ISP is messing with your bandwidth. It could be that Netflix has technical issues, but you'd read about those. That's why these tests are useful, and why we need more like them.
  - Aachen 3y ago
    > Netflix and Google (YouTube) are commercial entities that ISPs will intentionally throttle. In Nederland? I only heard these stories from the USA, and then specifically about monopoly ISPs with Netflix as trial target to see if they can get extra money from them
    - jeroenhd 3y ago
      We're safe from this nonsense here in the Netherlands ever since KPN tried to blocked Skype on their network and upset legilators, and the EU has had net neutrality law for a while now. However, with most of the internet being developed over in the USA, the internet as a whole gets better with these features. I haven't caught any real ISP here (only train/public WiFi). I don't trust Dutch ISPs to follow the law so I do run these checks every now and then. At least one American mobile carrier overtly advertises "5G" with "unlimited data" followed by "DVD quality (480p) standard" video quality, but not every carrier in every country will be that direct.
unsupp0rted 3y ago
I've found Fast.com gamed sometimes when traveling in Asia/Europe, in the sense the ISP prioritizes Netflix traffic but normal traffic never gets within 20% of that Fast.com download speed or has much higher latency or something...? With Cloudflare I'm guessing it's a more balanced measure.
- capableweb 3y ago
  Huh, that's strange, I usually see the opposite when I'm out and about (particularly in Europe/South America). Popular services like Netflix are throttled but downloading huge blobs from my own servers is much faster.
  - Aachen 3y ago
    Here in Europe it's all equally fast. I don't remember ever having a throttled service, that sounds like a page out of the dystopian scenarios produced in the era where net neutrality legislation was being proposed/promoted ten years ago or something. There were rumors back then that bittorrent was being throttled (and corresponding protocol obfuscation and port changing) but I never had that myself
    - jgtrosh 3y ago
      Fast.com was created specifically to pinpoint the throttling that was actively applied to Netflix in many occurrences back then. It seems to be mostly gone, especially since streaming video now accounts for >50% of web traffic you can't easily throttle it and hope no one notices.
      - Aachen 3y ago
        In the USA specifically, I thought? Or which other regions has that happened in? I remember Comcast specifically having a monopoly in many areas and being able to pressure Netflix into getting money from both sides of the fiber (consumers and service providers)
    - 3y ago
secondcoming 3y ago
I find fast.com massively overestimates my speeds. Interestingly, if you hide the tab running their speedtest you get even higher speeds.
- dspillett 3y ago
  > I find fast.com massively overestimates my speeds. I find fast.com more accurate than most, going by the throughput I see to/from other resources, particularly for upstream rates (which some, including Cloudflair, seem to significantly under-measure). Of course this may vary depending on line type (FTTC, “up to 67Mbit down n& 17 up”, generally seeing more like 50/12) and location (due to differences in local network conditions and peering between you & the speedtest) to I'm not surprised to hear you see the results quite different to those I experience. > if you hide the tab running their speedtest you get even higher speeds I suspect this is due to your browser throttling CPU use and timer granularity for background or occluded tabs⁰ reducing the accuracy of the readings, if the code isn't working to mitigate the effect of these throttles on the calculations. -- [0] refs: https://blog.chromium.org/2020/11/tab-throttling-and-more-performance.html https://blog.chromium.org/2020/11/tab-throttling-and-more-pe..., https://www.reddit.com/r/incremental_games/comments/jefviz/fyi_how_to_disable_timer_throttling_on_google/ https://www.reddit.com/r/incremental_games/comments/jefviz/f..., and many more
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

ehhthing 3y ago

> then that puts cloudflare in a very strong negotiating position for peering agreements etc. Ideally settlement peering would exist for everyone. Cloudflare, like every other sane provider prefers IX routes over PNI since it's less expensive for everyone involved. There really shouldn't be a discussion about whether peering should be settlement free or not.