[Cake] [Bloat] dslreports is no longer free

Fri May 1 17:11:03 EDT 2020

Hi Sergey,

> On May 1, 2020, at 22:09, Sergey Fedorov <sfedorov at netflix.com> wrote:
> 
> Great review, Sebastian!
>  
> NETFLIX: fast.com.
>         Pros: allows selection of upload testing, supposedly decent back-end, duration configurable
>                 allows unloaded, loaded download and loaded upload RTT measurements (but reports sinlge numbers for loaded and unloaded RTT, that are not the max)
>         Cons: RTT report as two numbers one for the loaded and one for unloaded RTT, time-course of RTTs missing
>         BUFFERBLOAT verdict: incomplete, but oh, so close...
> Just a note that I have a plan to separate the loaded latency into upload/download. It's not great UX now they way it's implemented.

	Great! I really appreciate the way fast.com evolves carefully to not confuse the intended users and to stay true to its core mission while it still gaining additional features that are not directly part of Netflix business case to operate that test in the first place. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love that I can easily understand why you should be interested in getting reliable robust speedtests from all existing or potential customers to your back-end; and unlike an ISP's internal speedtest, you are not likely to sugar coat things ;) as your goal and the end-user's goal are fully aligned.

> The timeline view is a bit more nuanced, in the spirit of the simplistic UX, but I've been thinking on a good way to show that for super users as well.

	Great again! I see the beauty of keeping things simple while maybe hiding optional information behind an additional "click".

> Two latency numbers - that's more user friendly, we want the general user to understand the meaning.

	+1; for normal users that is already bliss. For de-bloating a link however a bit more time resolution generally makes things a bit easier to reason about ;)

> And latency under load is much easier than bufferbloat.

	+1; as far as I can tell that term sort of was a decent description of the observed phenomenon that then got a life of its own; in retrospect it was not the most self explanatory term. I like to talk about the latency-under-load-increase when helping people to debloat their links, but that also is a tad on the long side.

> 
> As a side note, if our backend is decent, I'm curious what are the backends for the speed tests that exist that are great :)

	Ah, I might have tried too hard at understatement, this was the only back-end worth mentioning in the "pros" section...
(well, I also like how breitbandmessung.de deals with their purposefully limited backend (all located in a single" data center in Germany located in an AS that is not directly owned by any ISP, it's the german regulators official speedtest for germany against which we can effectively measure and get an early exit from contracts if the ISPs can not deliver the contracted rates (with a bit of slack)))

Best Regards
	Sebastian

>  
> SERGEY FEDOROV
> Director of Engineering
> sfedorov at netflix.com
> 121 Albright Way  |  Los Gatos, CA 95032
> 
> 
> 
> On Fri, May 1, 2020 at 12:48 PM Sebastian Moeller <moeller0 at gmx.de> wrote:
> Hi Dave,
> 
> well, it was a free service and it lasted a long time. I want to raise a toast to Justin and convey my sincere thanks for years of investing into the "good" of the internet. 
> 
> Now, the question is which test is going to be the rightful successor? 
> 
> Short of running netperf/irtt/iper2/iperf3 on a hosted server, I see lots of potential but none of the tests are really there yet (grievances in now particular order):
> 
> OOKLA: speedtest.net.
>         Pros: ubiquitious, allows selection of single flow versus multi-flow test, allows server selection
>         Cons: only IPv4, only static unloaded RTT measurement, no control over measurement duration
>         BUFFERBLOAT verdict: incomplete, maybe usable as load generator
> 
> 
> NETFLIX: fast.com.
>         Pros: allows selection of upload testing, supposedly decent back-end, duration configurable
>                 allows unloaded, loaded download and loaded upload RTT measurements (but reports sinlge numbers for loaded and unloaded RTT, that are not the max)
>         Cons: RTT report as two numbers one for the loaded and one for unloaded RTT, time-course of RTTs missing
>         BUFFERBLOAT verdict: incomplete, but oh, so close...
> 
> 
> NPERF: nperf.com
>         Pros: allows server selection, RTT measurement and report as time course, also reports average rates and static RTT/jitter for Up- and Download
>         Cons: RTT measurement for unloaded only, reported RTT static only , no control over measurement duration
>         BUFFERBLOAT verdict: incomplete,
> 
> 
> THINKBROADBAND: www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest
>         Pros: IPv6, reports coarse RTT time courses for all three measurement phases
>         Cons: only static unloaded RTT report in final results, time courses only visible immediately after testing, no control over measurement duration
>         BUFFERBLOAT verdict: a bit coarse, might work for users within a reasonable distance to the UK for acute de-bloating sessions (history reporting is bad though)
> 
> 
> honorable mentioning:
>         BREITBANDMESSUNG: breitbandmessung.de
>         Pros: query of contracted internet access speed before measurement, with a scheduler that will only start a test when the backend has sufficient capacity to saturate the user-supplied contracted rates, IPv6 (happy-eyeballs)
>         Cons: only static unloaded RTT measurement, no control over measurement duration
>         BUFFERBLOAT verdict: unsuitable, exceot as load generator, but the bandwidth reservation feature is quite nice.
> 
> Best Regards
>         Sebastian
> 
> 
> > On May 1, 2020, at 18:44, Dave Taht <dave.taht at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 
> > https://www.reddit.com/r/HomeNetworking/comments/gbd6g0/dsl_reports_speed_test_no_longer_free/
> > 
> > They ran out of bandwidth.
> > 
> > Message to users here:
> > 
> > http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest
> > 
> > 
> > -- 
> > Make Music, Not War
> > 
> > Dave Täht
> > CTO, TekLibre, LLC
> > http://www.teklibre.com
> > Tel: 1-831-435-0729
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