HI Folks,
This is a highly sensitive subject, so please try to help if you can independent of your views on the matter.
I wish to redirect speedtest.net to a local speedtest at our noc.
We are a small WISP with a 100meg Time Warner light fiber line that we use to feed the boonies.
We do not limit how much bandwidth an end user gets, they get what they get, which is a lot for some
and little for others. This is will change in the near future. However sometimes the net slows down, sometimes our pipes saturate, sometimes both slow down like during recent elections.
Our customers are not very bright, they use speedtest.net to measure their speeds and do not understand that speedtest.net has
nothing to do with their local link, particularly when their local link IS faster than the net as a whole.
I have provided okla's mini speedtest on our our internal links, so I can redirect the customer to test them, to determine if the problem is with us or with the net as a whole which I can not do anything about.
I wish to know how to block access to speedtest entirely or to redirect it, but it seems to use a very complicated set of IP numbers and
now maybe proprietary protocols.
I am also concerned that when a user picks a local server to test against, it picks one at a local competitor who has set up a server for people to test against. Results from that server are generally poor during the say compared to a larger ISP in Syracuse for example.
I have always thought that by downloading from that closest server we are testing their upload, and by uploading to the server we are testing their download. When they are full during the day it makes us look awful.
However in looking at the actual tcpdump of the process, the tests are actually done between 10 or more different widely separated servers and thus are not connected directly to the competitors network at all while the testing takes place. So I don't really understand how speedtest.net picks its many servers for each test, nor why the speeds should vary so greatly according to which testing server I test to on speedtests home page as the tests don't go to that network at all anyhow. What am I missing?
Anyhow if anyone is wiling to share some insight into blocking or redirecting requests to speedtest.net and the many other speedtesting sites I would be obliged. I know firewaalling pretty well, but not the exact structure of speedtest.net The redirect might lead customers to a web page that would instruct them on how the system works, and allow them to then
click on any testing service they wish or their local link, once they understand the difference.
Thanks Homer Smith
CEO LIghtlink Internet