Download the FCC Speed Test App

[Zhenya]

US Government app on my personal device that's meant to move data?

No thanks.

Here are the permissions for the Android App (including location, storage access, and starting on boot)

  -Photos/Media/Files
   --read the contents of your USB storage
   --modify or delete the contents of your USB storage
   
  -Wi-Fi connection information
   --view Wi-Fi connections
  
  -Phone
   --read phone status and identity
   --Device ID & call information
   --read phone status and identity
  
  -Location
   --precise location (GPS and network-based)
   --approximate location (network-based)
  
  -Storage
   --read the contents of your USB storage
   --modify or delete the contents of your USB storage
  
  -Other
   --run at startup
   --full network access
   --prevent device from sleeping
   --view network connections

[sliken]

Isn't that's what's required?

Read/modify USB storage = write bandwidth logs, read them later for graphing

View wifi connections = track bandwidth per network

Phone status identity = track phones with a unique id

Location = track location to help find the best/worst physical locations for network.

Full network access = send/receive packets

Prevent sleeping = accurate benchmark numbers

View network connections = track bandwidth per network.

[stuffbyspencer]

Test your internet speed by seeing how fast you can download government malware and upload your personal data. It's so innovative!

[_ZeD_]

This is something I really don't understand...

You really trust private people over Government?

Why?

[2OEH8eoCRo0]

Everyone here cries about shitty ISPs in America. This is obviously a tool to police shitty American ISPs isn't it? You need data first.

It's why 3rd party speed tests and people saying "internet is too slow" doesn't cut it.

https://www.fcc.gov/general/measuring-mobile-broadband-metho...

[vlovich123]

Some of those permissions don’t exist on the iOS version (and some aren’t even permissions available on the platform?) which may indicate that Android perms are misconfigured.

[avipars]

GPS is a required permission for android in recent versions to check APs and do Wi-Fi network scanning

[devindotcom]

Pretty gnarly. I'm going to ask the FCC about this.

[fouric]

If I were a major, anticompetitive ISP, the minute I found out about this tool, I would figure out how to fingerprint it, and then artificially inflate results by giving priority and bonus bandwidth to its tests.

What is this app doing to prevent that? I don't see any mention of any awareness that ISPs have historically gamed speed tests and what countermeasures FCC has taken.

Idea: would it be possible to built an app that measured the speed of connections for other apps by using the platforms' VPN APIs to create a dummy VPN service that just measured bandwidth/latency?

[Buraksr]

I guess the benefit of google’s speed test is that if ISPs try to artificially speed it up, they run a good chance of accidentally increasing the bandwidth of youtube.

[sliken]

Heh, sure, but that already happens with various bandwidth sites.

I've tried to replicate various bandwidth tests and failed miserably. Then tried a bandwidth test over VPN (to hide it from the ISP) and then got numbers matching my real world tests.

It works the opposite way as well, when Comcast was blackmailing Netflix you'd get terrible bandwidth, unless you used a VPN to hide your traffic.

[yabones]

Fingerprinting something like this would be trivial, they've probably already done it. Using the ja3 library [1] you can make pretty good deterministic TLS connection fingerprints, and that works fine for traffic that you can't decrypt. IDS/IPS software has used similar methods to identify and block encrypted traffic for some time now.

[1] https://github.com/salesforce/ja3

[adamcstephens]

Likely the ISPs that are doing the worst job are limited on the edge, not centrally. Much harder to game the numbers when the connection to a house is awful.

[Mordisquitos]

> If I were a major, anticompetitive ISP, the minute I found out about this tool, I would figure out how to fingerprint it, and then artificially inflate results by giving priority and bonus bandwidth to its tests.

AKA the Volkswagen strategy.

[montroser]

Why is this an app instead of a just a web page with some javascript? It looks like the answer is that the app runs continuously in the background and periodically/randomly runs bandwidth tests and phones home with the results.

I like the goals of this initiative, but also would appreciate a way to participate that doesn't involve a full blown mobile app and all the security/privacy issues that come with.

[sliken]

They are trying to get a good survey of all the networks you visit, with multiple samples for each.

However it asks for a bandwidth allocation, which I gave it infinite. It also asks to run in the background, which I denied.

So it only runs when I ask, which seems completely reasonable.

[TheRealDunkirk]

Every time I get reminded about speed testing, I check my connection, and every time, I'm getting far less than I'm paying for. Then I have to go on a modem-reboot phone-tag game with support to get it corrected. I have gigabit service with Comcast, I'm testing at 50 Mbps, and I just don't have the energy this morning to fight them about it again. Thanks for reminding me.

[neogodless]

I'm lucky enough to have both Comcast and Verizon FiOS available. The latter offers 200/200 Mbps service for $40/month, and I typically get 300/320 whenever I test (speedtest.net).

Presumably the issue is "on your end" each time, until you go through the steps they make you go through, and then it mysteriously resolves just before your support call ends, without them taking responsibility?

https://imgur.com/a/Ghtv1II

[extradesgo]

Is there any acceptable excuse for this not being open sourced?

[commoner]

Previous versions of the FCC Speed Test app are free and open source (GPLv2):

2017 iOS version: https://github.com/SamKnows/skios-fcc

2014 Android version: https://github.com/SamKnows/skandroid-fcc

2013 Android version: https://github.com/FCC/mobile-mba-androidapp

Methodology: https://www.fcc.gov/general/measuring-broadband-america-open...

Judging from the media coverage, it looks like the app was recently updated. The source code for the current version has not yet been released, but I hope that it will be soon.

[dombili]

Looks like the app was outsourced to a company named SamKnows. They have another speed test app on their iOS developer page that looks eerily similar to this app. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/samknows-test-your-internet/id...

[hugh-avherald]

Making it harder to fingerprint.

[LinuxBender]

Is there a simple app that exposes curl on the phone? If so, one could just use the -w flag to expose things like tcp connect time, dns lookup time, ssl handshake time, file download time and just point it to a file that is not too big for the phone. Seems some people have thought of curl on the phone before. [1] Maybe even have a simple html menu that gives you 10 destinations to choose from. The stats could even be read by the fcc site in URL parms so no POST is even required. Curl can also do upload timing tests and expose that in the -w flag. To use that flag also requires -o /dev/null which addresses storage. No need for storage.

[1] - https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4952169/using-curl-in-an...

[ggvvfdde]

I can't wait for my ISP to whitelist the FCCs servers so it shows full speed, while continuing to throttle other services.

[bradknowles]

Note that DSLReports has a good web browser based speed test page at http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest

I can tell you that AT&T uVerse definitely throttles this one. I get ~40mbps when I’m not on VPN, and when I am on VPN, I get 60-80mbps.

Same used to be true for fast.com and the corresponding web page, until Netflix recently decided they don’t like my VPN and so the Speedtest stopped running at all unless I was unprotected.

Seems to me like Netflix could run their own VPN or contract for VPN services through a carrier, so that we could still get to the same shows we’d watch anyway, while also being protected from an abusive carrier on our end.

[tchalla]

Why does the App not provide a desktop app + web alternative? Here's the German government alternative which provides desktop browser, desktop app in addition to mobile app.

https://breitbandmessung.de

[ho_schi]

I can recommend it. They use the relevant data centers in Frankfurt, right in the middle of Europe. The "Browsermessung" works nice and reliable on Linux and there is no Flash or advertisements. Of course you can also use the standalone apps. And interesting thing is, they value the Ping (actual speed and most relevant for Gaming) and not just the data throughput (Up-Download, relevant for Updates and Streaming).

[daniellarusso]

So, is it testing home internet speeds, or really how good your wifi AP works?

[bscphil]

Hmm. Ideally, your AP should handle speeds at least as fast as your WAN downlink provides, and most Americans have an AP provided by their ISP, so even if in some cases the AP is effectively throttling the connection, the ISP should get the blame in the end anyway.

(Obviously there are exceptions to this, but I don't think the FCC is suing anyone on the basis of this data...)

[rozab]

Here's the UK equivalent (a pretty clean web page)

https://checker.ofcom.org.uk/broadband-test

The majority of ISPs here are in a voluntary program whereby they must provide a certain minimum speed (specified in the contract) or the customer is allowed to break the contract.

[joncrane]

Also created by the same company that the FCC used (SamKnows)

[cute_boi]

Is this going to work anyway? In the country where I live they have made speedtest site like fast.com ridiculously fast (using routes etc). But in reality all other website are too slow.

How does it handle the result which is inflated by ISP? The solution is to regularly connect multiple different asn and check the speed?

[jedberg]

Fast.com is owned by Netflix. It specifically tests your speed to a Netflix server. So if your ISP has a Netflix server on its network (many ISPs do) then it will be super fast.

[teddyh]

Note: Users in Sweden are probably better served by http://www.bredbandskollen.se/

[bochoh]

I love that the app publisher for Apple is SamKnows - alluding to mass surveillance. Uncle Sam knows and is watching.

[nojito]

SamKnows is a real analytics company.

https://www.samknows.com/

[ElijahLynn]

That is crazy that there isn't a webapp and is iOS and Android only.

[avipars]

developed by SamKnows (on iOS)