[ NNSquad ] Samknows broadband monitoring project in UK

[Wes Felter <wesley@felter.org>]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/06/samknows_broadband_performance/

"The initiative to improve the transparency of ISP packages is being led 
by Samknows.com. The site is aiming to attract 200 volunteers who'll be 
sent a free tweaked Linksys router that will measure and report download 
speeds for HTTP and non-HTTP traffic, latency, packet loss, DNS 
response, and website loading times."

http://www.samknows.com/broadband/pm/faq.html

"Our Performance Monitoring Network is a unique system that aims to 
provide statistical data on the performance of broadband providers in 
the UK. Until now people have only been able to compare broadband on 
price, headline speeds (which are the subject of much controversy!), 
anecdotal discussion and some ad-hoc speed tester results.

We're deploying small hardware-based monitoring units to volunteers all 
around the country. Once connected to the volunteer's home network the 
units will perform a series of tests at regular intervals during the 
day, every day of the year. The results of these tests are fed up to our 
reporting engine and combined with the results of others on the same ISP 
to form a national view of how that ISP is performing. Given enough 
coverage we could potentially even drill down to regional monitoring.

This goes far beyond running vanilla speed tests. The units are checking 
latency, packet loss, DNS query times and failures, web page loading 
times, as well as the obligatory suite of speed tests. Additional tests 
are also in development too. The goal is to provide a statistically 
sound measurement of overall broadband quality."