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United States Communications

FCC Wants You To Test Your Internet Speeds With Its New App (theverge.com) 68

Posted by msmash from the moving-forward dept.
The Federal Communications Commission has released a new speed test app to help measure internet speeds across the country, available on both Android and iOS. From a report: The FCC Speed Test App works similarly to existing speed-testing apps like Ookla's and Fast by Netflix, automatically collecting and displaying data once users press the "start testing" button. According to the FCC, the data collected through the app will inform the agency's efforts to collect more accurate broadband speed information and aid its broadband deployment efforts. "To close the gap between digital haves and have nots, we are working to build a comprehensive, user-friendly dataset on broadband availability," Acting Chair Jessica Rosenworcel said in a statement Monday. "Expanding the base of consumers who use the FCC Speed Test app will enable us to provide improved coverage information to the public and add to the measurement tools we're developing to show where broadband is truly available throughout the United States."
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FCC Wants You To Test Your Internet Speeds With Its New App More

FCC Wants You To Test Your Internet Speeds With Its New App

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  • Hmm (Score:4, Interesting)

    by TFlan91 ( 2615727 ) on Monday April 12, 2021 @02:35PM (#61265048)

    You should artificially throttle your connection when using this app so that your actual speeds may be the target...

    • They'll probably make it a federal crime. When the government starts making services ripping them off = jail time.

      • Voluntarily giving even more of my info to any US govt agency?

        No thank you.

        • What info do you think they're going to get from a speedtest app?
        • The scariest 10 words in the english language "we are from the government. We are here to help" - Ronald Reagan
          • The entire point of government is to help society. The morons that use it as a way to collect cash from donors while doing nothing should get voted out of office.

            • Re: (Score:1)

              by e3m4n ( 947977 )
              yea how do you feel about how you were 'helped' with the 2018 tax changes? Enjoy having your itemized deductions capped at $5k, no longer getting to claim legitimate work related expenses? I bet you're one of the ones wanting CA to force Uber to issue W-2s to the drives. Congratulations! you just fucked every single Uber driver out of all the mileage deductions for wear and tear on their vehicles. If they drove 20k miles last year, you literally fucked them out of $12k in deductions. How have they been 'hel

      • Or they'll just filter it out because it's noise.

  • QoS Rule coming in 3...2...1... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AcidFnTonic ( 791034 ) on Monday April 12, 2021 @02:40PM (#61265078) Homepage

    Yeah and unless these servers are constantly rotated, randomized, and from hard to predict domains, the ISPS will just add priority rules to their equipment favoring any speed tests that are happening.

    I truly hope they thought about this.

    • Of course, the providers could try to do this. But they got caught with it... I seem to remember something about a car company that detected testing equipment and adjusted for that.

      Or talk to FCC to open up the server part so anyone with a good enough server could host a test server... In good old-fashion open source manners.

      • Yeah, some information is better than no information (unless you think you're getting all the information).

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by fermion ( 181285 )
      I generally have incredible speeds when I use Speedtest and my ISP. Then I try to load a web page...

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by v1 ( 525388 )

        (cable guy comes over to install new modem)

        tech: "OK all set, lets check out the speed you're getting..."
        (starts to browse to ANYWHERE)

        me: "how about we go to someplace OTHER than your first pick."

        And I assume I'm not the only one that sees their download speed be okayish for the first 1-2 seconds of the test, and then suddenly JUMP up and flat line at the quoted speed? things that make you go Hmm

        (looks like somebody's doing traffic analysis and tweaking my QoS on the fly)

        • Re:QoS Rule coming in 3...2...1... (Score:4, Informative)

          by random_nb ( 2453280 ) on Monday April 12, 2021 @04:41PM (#61265574)
          TCP window scaling [wikipedia.org] is part of what causes that peculiar bandwidth chart shape. Not a malevolent operator in the middle, but a negotiation between your client and the remote server starting with safe assumptions that will get okay performance on most connections, and then optimizing performance for what the link allows as the transfer continues. Some bandwidth test services also start additional simultaneous streams until the connection is saturated, which further compounds the "ramp-up" effect.

          That doesn't preclude a poor connection for other reasons such as line signal quality, bad traffic shaping implementations, congestion, overprovisioning, misbehaving security inspection hardware/software, or buggy network acceleration chips somewhere in the mix. Internet's chocked right full of points of failure, and your typical modem installation technician isn't going to understand most. What makes for "good Internet" is surprisingly nuanced.
    • Speed tests automatically get priority because throttling occurs after about 10-15 min of sustained throughput. Speedtests last like 2-3min.
    • Spectrum gives me a few extra megabits per second for a minute or so when I suddenly start using all available bandwidth. I still always get the speed that I pay for, but it seems designed to game speed tests and make it seem like I'm getting even more.

  • The iOS app is made by SamKnows.
    Which is a good thing :)
    As ISPs tend to "unclog the pipes" coming your way if they see any SamKnows speed-test traffic.

    • Have to wonder what else Sam knows and wants to know. Why can't I just run it from a browser?

      • Because the government can track their citizens more easily using their own app.

    • *sigh* I'm a SamKnows white box customer. Have been for several years. Didn't help me the last couple of days when my ISP was having connection issues, and the last day or two was no connection at all. Nor the weeks prior when it seemed my connection wasn't performing as good as it has previous years.

      Also of note I'm also a RIPE node [ripe.net] customer as well so I have independent numbers.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Coius ( 743781 )

      A long time ago, I was given a free router from them (circa 2006) which did speedtests on it's own during down-time of bandwidth use. It worked OK, and was used to prove Cox Communications wasn't actually giving customers what they told them they would get (which ended up with Cox getting sued in Nebraska and losing). It did end up involving them agreeing to roll-out gigabit fiber (called "Gigablast") albeit, almost 15 years after agreeing, but they did get fined to high hell (like $70M) for lying to the

  • So... over wifi, huh? (Score:3)

    by chispito ( 1870390 ) on Monday April 12, 2021 @03:00PM (#61265152)
    Does the app take the wifi throughput into account? Does it know when the wifi is congested or when the user is running the test from a part of the house with poor coverage? What if you have gigabit fiber and poor wifi coverage?
    • I hope it doesn't.

      If it doesn't it will help counteract all those claims that an area has broadband coverage when a single location has a good connection and the rest is shit.

    • Does the app take the wifi throughput into account? ... What if you have gigabit fiber and poor wifi coverage?

      I imagine they're trying to measure your 3-5G, LTE speeds as TFA specifically mentions wireless carriers coverage maps -- which wouldn't be a factor if your phone was connected through your home WiFi / home broadband network -- so perhaps the app either specifically uses that radio or wants you to disable WiFi during the test. Just guessing though.

    • This is for cellular coverage, not landline ISPs. That is why the app is for Android and iOS. They are targeting the bogus cellular coverage maps.

    • No. Its run by the government. What do you think. A bunch of under qualified employees given jobs for the sake of giving jobs. Your lucky they dont ask for your resting heart rate as part of their metrics.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by EvilSS ( 557649 )

      Does the app take the wifi throughput into account? Does it know when the wifi is congested or when the user is running the test from a part of the house with poor coverage? What if you have gigabit fiber and poor wifi coverage?

      It will permanently lock your internet to the speed it detects. Seriously what do you think will happen.

    • I feel like anyone with gigabit fiber would also have 802.11ac wifi, and be savvy enough to not run the test as far away from the router as they possibly can.

      • I feel like anyone with gigabit fiber would also have 802.11ac wifi, and be savvy enough to not run the test as far away from the router as they possibly can.

        As others have pointed out, I was mistaken and this is meant to test cell data, not ISPs. Also, the frustrating thing about gigabit for those who cannot get it, is that it's often not particularly expensive where available and many fiber providers no longer have a lower tier.

  • The clicking sounds of keyboards as ISPs throughout the country enter IP addresses of FCC speed testing sites into their bandwidth management systems.

    Who wouldn't think it swell for government to collect your IP + exact location just to run a speed test?

    "Q: So what information do you collect?

    A: Data related to the radio characteristics of the handset, information about the handset type and operating system version, the GPS coordinates available from the handset at the time each test is run, the date and tim

  • wouldn't it be better to have it run on a desktop so you can test wired connections?

    Also the sort of person who's likely to download and run this app is probably more technical, e.g. the data set is going to be biased to people with faster connections.

    • That is a terrible way to test cellular speed coverage - which is what this app does. It is part of the FCC's "mobile-performance measurement effort".

  • Obligatory "I aint installing no Federal GVT App! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ThomasBHardy ( 827616 ) on Monday April 12, 2021 @03:15PM (#61265222)

    Just waiting for the highly anticipated "I'm not going to install some Federal Government snooper app on my phone!" types to chime in.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by llzackll ( 68018 )

      Heh. People worried about privacy and the government spying on them tend to fail at critical thinking properly, or arent properly educated. I blame the media for that. Here's all they need to know. Here's the golden rule that I go by. They have bigger fish to fry and I don't have anything to hide. So don't give them a reason to target you. It's that simple. Corporations have much more on you than the government. Corporate entities know more about you than you know about yourself. Most most of the gen

  • I gave the app permission to know my location, but it doesn't provide that on the screen displayed by the app. I wonder if it reports my location to the FCC, which makes me wonder what else it reports but doesn't show. It does show the server location, but it's showing Seattle, and I'm 40 miles SE of Seattle right now. The Open Signal app shows my location, and it provides a guess at the location of the tower from which the signal originates. The FCC app showed 16M/s download speed the first time, and then

  • aren't there a bunch of speed test apps out there?
    why does the government need to get involved in testing speed when there are already a lot of non isp sources for this.
    This just sounds like one of those things that cost 100x more to develop by government than is supposed to compete with applications that are already free and available to everyone.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ksevio ( 865461 )

      I think you're missing the point - this one's developed by a third party for the government to collect ISP speed data from around the country.

  • This will be wildly inaccurate.

    For example, my home speeds on fiber, luckily, are 1gig up, 1 gig down. Testing on wireless though, you will be hard pressed to find a phone or device that can surpass 400-500mbit on wireless. I have a latest UniFi U6-LR WiFi6 AP, and have tested it with a Note10 Plus that's also WiFi6 and connected at 1.5gbit+ speeds still only suck down 500mbit, same as my Pixel 4 XL connecting at 866mbit. Even laptops running on wireless 5ghz channels at full 1.6gbit+ speeds using AX/WiFi6

    • If you are limited by the speed of your WiFi, then these aren't the droids your looking for - er, I mean - you aren't their target audience. FCC wants to know that where I live, CenturyLink might say they have fiber nearby, but in reality, the best I can get is crappy DSL with 600Kbps upload speed (and about 12Mbps upload). My Sprint MVNO (Tello) tests faster with a moderate signal I get 2 Mbps up and about the same download. What they are trying to find out is that while I live in town, and CenturyLink
    • I installed the app and ran it from various locations in my home. I also have 1gig up/down. I also get 400-600mbit on my phone. This app reported the same 40.x down up and 52.x up no matter where I was in my home. I'm pretty sure it is testing the cellular signal and then sending the results via the internet using your WiFi. I uninstalled it :)
    • Do you ever get near that 1g? I kept mine at 200mbps x 200mbps because I just never saw the likelihood I would ever hit even 200. I dont have a bunch of 4k, but even if I did thats still just 15mbps per device. For downloads I figured the other end would be limited anyway. Like ios updates NEVER come close to 200mbps even at 2am.

  • Misleading information. (Score:3)

    by waspleg ( 316038 ) on Monday April 12, 2021 @03:50PM (#61265354) Journal

    Description and Purpose

    Q: Why does the FCC have a Speed Test App?
    A: The app provides data for the FCC's Measuring Broadband America Program's mobile-performance measurement effort, an initiative to gather crowdsourced data on cellular network performance across the United States. The FCC mobile performance testing software, developed in cooperation with SamKnows Inc., uses smartphone-based technology to collect broadband performance data, with the highest commitment to protecting participants' privacy. The anonymized data is freely available (MBA-Mobile Data) to consumers, academics, policymakers, and any other interested parties.

    Emphasis mine.

    This is only for mobile networks. [fcc.gov]

    Where is the new part? This last "fixed" broadband report is from January. [fcc.gov]

  • So only Android/IOS means you're either testing your mobile provider or your wifi's capabilities. That leaves out a large chunk of people.

  • So am I to understand the FCC does not now know the speed you and I are currently receiving? How do they expect to legislate and equalize the most important commodity under their charter? This BS is 20 years overdue.

  • Only apps for phones. How about one for PCs?

  • Yeah - not a new app. Maybe a new version/release, but I've used it for several years.
  • An update perhaps? The App Store page says it was released 4 years ago

  • I assume the app will want to know your race, so it can be determined which races are discriminated against for internet speed.

  • Can this not be done via a browser?

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