Has anyone else seen the Netflix Speed Test reports that have been blowing things up recently?
According to the reports I was reading Speedtest.net and several of the other internet speed testers have been given “priority” status by the internet providers. Meaning that any query to those sites is given ‘priority’ and will have an artificially high throughput (mbps). Fast.com is done from the Netflix servers themselves, so if the Internet providers were to ‘prioritize’ that traffic, they would be prioritizing speed to Netflix which is something they don’t want to do. So theoretically, Fast.com should be a more accurate representation of your ‘real-life’ internet speed.
It goes to great lengths to ensure that it hasn’t been “fast laned” or that it will really only test Netflix performance (which Netflix already “pays a vig” to Comcast to not throttle) and it will also test for buffer bloat, which can easily reduce a 250Mbps connection to feeling like dialup.
Would be nice in the support section or in the UI to initiate a speed test from the unit to the Glowforge cloud (Create a worst case scenario waveform). And report it the same way Google Wifi does. Poor, Good, Great & Blazing Fast. Then have a ‘more info or advance’ clicker that shows the actual speed, dB, and other useful info.