If you troubleshoot your ISP based on speed tests you will be chasing
your tail. Meanwhile, that internet facing interface can see the true
numbers the entire time. The consumer is pulling their full capacity
on almost all links routinely even if briefly and can be nudged into
pushing more a dozen ways (including a speed test). The only thing
lacking is a latency measurement of some sort. Preseem and Libreqos's
TCP measurements on the head end are awesome, but that's not available
on the subscriber's side but if it were, there's the full testing
suite. how much peak data, what happened to latency. If you could
get data from the ISP's head end to diff you'd have internet vs isp
latencies. 'speed test' is a stress test or a burn in test in
The *big problem* (emphasis mine) is that the recent BEAD NOFO, pumping tens of billions of dollars into broadband, has *speedtests* as the "proof" that an ISP is delivering.
It's one thing to solve this problem at the ISP and consumer level. It's another to solve it at the political level. In this case, I think it's incumbent on ISPs to atone for former sins — now that we know that speed tests are not just bad but actively misleading, we need to provide real tools and education.