Best of the ISP-Lists

DSL

Your Speedometer is Broken

Members of the ISP-DSL list discuss dealing with customers who claim they're being cheated when Internet latency slows down their access to a distant site. It's important to educate customers so they know what they're buying.

[July 13, 2001]

On the ISP-DSL list in June, VB complained,

"Is it just me or does anyone else out there being driven crazy by these idiot websites that say they can measure the speed of an end user's connection to their ISP? I just had two irate customers threaten to 'shut me down' for cheating them because the dslreports.com speed test says they aren't getting the speed they're paying for. Never mind that the 'closest' test site is twelve heavily loaded hops from us, all the way across the country, and gives me a 270 Kbps speed on my lightly loaded T1, after which I proceed to download a file at 700+ Kbps. Any ideas on how to deal with this?"

A number of respondents offered their favorite places to send customers for better data:

[IC observed] "I usually have them download Neotrace, and also have them use a traceroute server. This gives them the basic trace route and ping utilities from where they sit to their site, as well as from different points on the Internet."

[WZ added] "Tucows repositories are a good source of fast downloads: I have converted many a customer by using Tucows."

[DS suggested] "Try 2Wire: it's a good source for a pretty accurate bandwidth test."

[Ed. note: 2Wire gave the ISP-Planet LAN a speed of 512 Kbps, but the link to MegaPath from DSLReports reported a speed of 371Kbps down and 754 Kbps up.]

Others recommended a DIY solution:

[GS offered] "We put up a speed test page within our network so the test is done locally instead from some congested network out there. We tell our customers to check it there: the info on how to run the test is listed on our DSL setup info page."

[IC added] "I have set up FTP services with varying size files (1MB, 5MB, 10MB), provided the clients with access, and let them do their own speed testing and calculations."

[RS agreed] "Set up a test FTP site one hop away and have them try that."

Still others suggested making sure your customers know what they're talking about:

[GC advised] "Education, education, education. Be patient, and teach your customers about networking. If they don't listen, then give up: they aren't worth the pain and anguish."

[IC agreed] "I think you have to spend some time educating the client as to what constitutes a busy day on the Internet, and what low latency at your gateway means."

—End