Speedtest.net developer Ookla confirms Myce's ISP speed test manipulation article

Ookla, the company behind speedtest.net, contacted Myce to confirm that indeed at least one tested ISP is using a way to manipulate the Ookla Speedtest result as we wrote yesterday. Manipulation of these tests can give customers of internet providers the idea that their internet connection is faster than it really is.

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In this case prioritizing port 8080 appears to be used, whether that's intentional or not, the results are different than they normally should be.

Ookla also states to be really impressed with the amount of research that went into our article on ISPs inflating Speedtest results and have made the following statement:

The accuracy of Speedtest results are paramount to Ookla, and we take seriously any attempt to manipulate those results. We have begun looking further into the ISP mentioned in your article, and it does appear that they prioritizing port 8080. Whenever we discover intentional manipulation we work to correct it as well as ensure it does not occur again in the future.

Speedtest does employ measures to prevent manipulation and have new mechanisms coming online soon to further combat this. Luckily, only a handful of the tens of thousands of ISPs worldwide attempt this. Regardless, we never want to see ISPs attempting to manipulate results; this only misleads customers to the actual performance they’re receiving.

Do you suspect that your ISP is giving higher Speedtest results than what you can achieve in the real world?  Please follow the steps on page #6 of the article, which shows how to run speed tests with TestMy on the HTTP port and port 8080 with a single thread and again multithreaded.

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The test results run over port 8080 should be similar to the equivalent tests run over HTTP.  If you find that you are consistently getting quicker test results over port 8080 than the equivalent HTTP test, please share the test results images below, indicating which image was for http or port 8080.

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