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> I've found Fast.com gamed sometimes … the ISP prioritizes Netflix traffic

The other side of this is why Netflix created Fast.com in the first place: ISPs throttling Netflix traffic (or just having poor peering arrangements that affected it) and blaming Netflix when customers complained about poor video quality (due to Netflix downgrading when experiencing congestion) because some speedtest (that likely the ISP prioritized, or at least knew it had better peering to) gave good numbers.

> With Cloudflare I'm guessing it's a more balanced measure.

Both serve the same purpose for their respective owners: to get good scores on fast.com an ISP can't throttle (or allowed to be throttled by avoidable congestion) Netflix traffic, to get good scores on speed.cloudflare.com they can't throttle (or allowed to be throttled by avoidable congestion) traffic to/from Cloudflair's topologically local DCs.

From a user's point of view using both, plus other tests, gives most meaningful results overall.



And they’ve figured out how to get around that. T-Mobile will show full speed on fast but if you have SD video enabled it’ll throttle Netflix videos but not fast.


I was about to bring up T-Mobile because fast.com shows AWFUL results for me, revealing that T-Mobile is in fact throttling Netflix.




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