[swashboon]

This was why Netflix setup Fast.com to use production servers and use data loads that mimic actual streaming video. Early on in streaming ISPs were throttling Netflix traffic when the household streaming demands started spiking (around 6 at night when every house in America would get home and turn on some streams). I believe there was a whole fight over peering agreements related to that... Speedtest.net was definitely getting gamed and may still be or at least Comcast et al was prioritizing burst traffic because residential customers realized the 'up to' home internet service could be pretty bad if your cable lines was over subscribed.

[FireBeyond]

> Speedtest.net was definitely getting gamed and may still be or at least Comcast et al was prioritizing burst traffic

Hell, during the height of this Comcast partnered with Speedtest, and now hav their own Speedtest servers all over the country, so you don't even leave Comcast's network.

[snuxoll]

> Hell, during the height of this Comcast partnered with Speedtest, and now hav their own Speedtest servers all over the country, so you don't even leave Comcast's network.

Most ISP's do, and if you tell it to use the server of some other provider off-net they'll happily make the excuse that "we can only guarantee bandwidth to the edge of our network."

It's a crap excuse, because, duh, you have no control over the path traffic takes once it leaves your AS on hopefully the best route - but if you have poor connectivity to your peers that's still on you.

[wredue]

I think most larger ISPs current have their own speed test nodes these days.

It’s problematic if they don’t, because if Comcast detects a virgin running a speed test, they can throttle virgin traffic to give lies as results. So virgin need to run their own nodes.

If you kill net neutrality, that behaviour is legal.