2020.09.21 – Broadband Forum Building More Accurate Open Source Speedtest

Broadband Forum Building More Accurate Open Source Speedtest

2020.09.21 – ISP Review

‘The Broadband Forum has kicked off the development of a new standards focused open source and User Datagram Protocol (UDP) based broadband speed test, which aims to deliver “more accurate results” and “updated methods and metrics which are more suited to the gigabit services now being deployed.”

Accuracy has always a problem with testing any kind of internet connection. For example, traditional web based speedtests can easily be impacted or polluted by issues such as slow WiFi, local network congestion (e.g. background updates or other users consuming bandwidth at the same as the test being run) and various other problems (e.g. any limitations of the remote server used for testing).

One way around this is to place the testing equipment before the WiFi and have it run during periods of idle connectivity (i.e. low network traffic), which can usually be achieved by either installing a custom modified router into the network (e.g. the SamKnows approach, as used by Ofcom and Virgin Media etc.) or adding custom firmware code into the ISPs bundled broadband router in order to do the same (as used by BT and other ISPs).

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