As we all know now, BezeqInt has a quite invasive caching proxy. I wondered how does it affect broadband speed test applications out there. Many of us used them at least once. So i made a google
search and tried a dozen of those on my 15Mbps line. You can see
www.speedtest.net results on the left.
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| Sydney |
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| Tokyo |
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| New York |
Wherever i download from speed is always ~15Mbps. Of course it is too good to be true. Most of the application i've tried used usual http connection to download a test file. Speedtest.net is not an exception so it wasn't a surprise when i found that all the files used in measurements were served by BezeqInt proxy rendering the results quite meaningless. Most interesting part is that speedtest.net generates unique urls for measurements although downloaded file is always the same. Which begs the question: how is it possible for proxy to have this file if url is completely new? Two most obvious answers: proxy has been configured that way or it learned from the usage pattern to "optimize" access to this resource. Any way results are useless because i want to measure my actual download speed from that specific location not the speed from some internal BezeqInt server.
If you want to test your download speed from certain locations i'd recommend
myspeed.visualware.com. This software doesn't use the usual http port therefore doesn't go through proxy and provides results much closer to the truth.
3 comments:
A few days back, I read an article in TheMarker that explained how ISPs in Israel block connection speeds from people who are heavy downloaders.
I have been a customer of Netvision for around 15 years and I can say that to this day, the speed I get when I download stuff from the internet is and always have been at the stated connection speed I registered with.
As for cheating SpeedTest... What happened to the days in which people were sent to a localized speed test issued by the ISP or BEZEQ. I bet back then, cheating customers was a much easier job.
@ronenmendez They still use local speed tests like this one. http://speedtest.bezeq.co.il/
And it's understandable, since ISPs can't control quality of service outside of their own network. I'm just pointing out the effects of the transparent caching proxies when you do international tests. Those proxies are smart now, they can learn from the traffic passing by and "optimize" it, rendering such cross country tests quite meaningless...
I forgot to mention one thing though. I've noticed that on Friday, around noon, the connection does seem to slow down. Surprisingly, when using a VPN to route through Germany, France, Italy or other countries, the connections gains its speeds.
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