It is tempting. This is also the IT Guy who told me "I can definitely
tell how much faster my LAN is since I've changed from Cat5e to Cat6
cables."
On 11/5/2019 9:47 AM, Craig Schmaderer wrote:
Nate, you should route his call into a special phone tree that he can
not escape out of. lol
*From:*AF <af-boun...@af.afmug.com> *On Behalf Of *Nate Burke
*Sent:* Tuesday, November 5, 2019 9:43 AM
*To:* AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <af@af.afmug.com>
*Subject:* Re: [AFMUG] Priority on Speedtest.net
I think it would be a good tool to have in the toolbox, but maybe
selectively applied.
We have one business customer (Broadband), every morning the "IT guy"
will run a speedtest, and call in if it's not the 40mb he expects. He
don't bother to look at any of his other network traffic, any
downloads that are going on, if there are actually any problems. He
only cares what speedtest shows, and if his screen doesn't show 40mb,
then he's calling. Every time, !EVERY TIME!, it's because his network
traffic is using the rest of the connection, which we explain to him
EVERY TIME, but this has been his operating procedure for the last 3
years. "Hey guys, speeds are slow this morning, you need to check it
and fix it."
On 11/5/2019 9:30 AM, Ken Hohhof wrote:
If you sell by speed tiers, I think speedtest.net can actually be
your friend, and you don’t want to doctor the results. If the guy
on a 10 Mbps plan is complaining his Internet is slow because he
can’t watch 5 HD streams simultaneously, it helps to show him
“you’re getting what you’re paying for”. Then you can maybe
upsell him to a higher speed tier.
If he’s downloading a 150 GB Xbox game, your tech support is going
to have to educate him about restricting the hours that game
consoles can do downloads. Making speedtest.net results look
better isn’t going to avoid that, in fact it may make that more
difficult. The effort might be better spent finding a way to
deprioritize software downloads, so people can watch video or pay
games while new games are downloading.
If you sell best effort “up to” speeds, the answer may be different.
*From:*AF <af-boun...@af.afmug.com>
<mailto:af-boun...@af.afmug.com> *On Behalf Of *Adam Moffett
*Sent:* Tuesday, November 5, 2019 8:46 AM
*To:* af@af.afmug.com <mailto:af@af.afmug.com>
*Subject:* Re: [AFMUG] Priority on Speedtest.net
If I'm being honest, it's partly a failure on the sales end to
manage expectations on wireless ("up to 50mbps" etc), and partly a
failure of tech support to manage the conversation. IMO they need
to not let the customer focus on a speed test result and instead
prompt them to talk about what their actual problems are. Whether
the speed test says 10 meg or 50 meg has no bearing on the fact
that you suck of Call of Duty or that your VPN to the office
doesn't want to connect this morning.
I think the idea is just make the speed test show what they want
to see and then we can move the conversation forward. It strikes
me as a viable but lazy and dishonest solution. I'm trying hard to
be open minded.
I appreciate all the thoughts on this. Thanks everyone.
On 11/5/2019 8:01 AM, Daniel White wrote:
I've worked extensively with Sandvine and Saisei and this is a
topic that always comes up since it is fairly easy to
implement via those appliances (and easier to implement across
multiple speed testing sites).
I don't see it as evil on a best effort connection. Customers
typically are not likely to understand what the results mean
and the only congestion it masks is on your network (which you
should be aware of anyways). You can chalk it up to
reasonable network management practices, as the intent is to
show what your connection is capable of vs. what is available
to you at that moment. Furthermore, unless the speedtest
server is on your network, sometimes the issue is on the net
or with the server so further impacting the results by giving
the testing a low availability on your network is further
giving your customers the wrong impression of your actual
delivery.
By implementing something though - how many support tickets
are you potentially reducing? How about customer churn? If
these are issues for you is it because you have actual
congestion on your network? Is hacking the response worthwhile
from a technical effort - and if your customers found out
about it is it worthwhile from a PR standpoint?
I usually end up somewhere in the it's cool to tinker with but
of limited value in the real world. The PR fallout if your
competition finds out and uses it against you is probably more
damaging.
My 2 cents.
photograph
*Daniel White
*Co-Founder & Managing Director of Operations
*phone:* +1 (702) 470-2766
*direct:*+1 (702) 470-2770
Adam Moffett wrote on 11/4/19 12:32:
I can set a higher priority DSCP value on speedtest.net
traffic. I tested this on one SM and it works great. On a
busy AP at 9:30pm I was getting speedtest results from
12-20mbps. I set the speedtest traffic to DSCP 26 and
enable a "medium" priority channel and now it's 34mbps
every single time without fail (and at my data rate, frame
size, etc that's all I could ever hope for).
The question is: Would this be evil?
The feeling is that for some customers there's nothing
actually wrong except they run speedtest.net
simultaneously as their XBox downloads a game and then
call to report "slow" speeds. The feeling is that it
would be easier to just let them see a bigger speed test
number than to educate them (and some will always refuse
to be educated).
The evil part is that it would mask an actual congestion
problem.
There's also a notion being tossed around the office that
our competitors are already doing this. I have no idea if
they actually are, and I'm also not sure if I care what
they're doing.
-Adam
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