FCC empowering US citizens

This week the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) launches its new app built by SamKnows. US citizens can feel confident; this new app provides better and more accurate coverage maps, and even better, allows citizens the opportunity to challenge mobile providers if they are unhappy with their service. 

More on-hold time?

Literally nobody wants more on-hold time. Which is why we work hard to speed up Care Agent calls. In our latest release we’ve improved our ConstantCare search experience so you can find customers more easily. This means you can help your customers faster and reduce on-hold time, and their frustration. So you can get on with your day. Phew!

What’s your customers’ streaming experience like?

With video streaming being such a normal part of everyday life, it’s important to be able to monitor customer experience easily and accurately. So, we’ve developed the Media Streaming Test that allows you to measure the performance of any HLS or DASH based streaming service.

Say hello to our new Router Agent

We’ve updated our Router Agent so you can run more tests and now get the results faster. Meaning you can understand and improve your customers’ internet performance even more. Read on to find out how.

How to improve your internet

Join us on our mission to make the internet better for everyone, starting with your own experience, followed by that of your fellow country folk. 

How to build trust with your customers

Do you have customers on a pay as you go (PAYG) plan or limited usage plan? It can be a nightmare when the systems you use to track customers’ usage fail. We have a service which can help, and gain the trust back from your customers. Interested? Read on.

Add Quality of Experience tests to any router

Join some of the world’s largest ISPs integrating our technology to gain visibility of end-to-end network performance and customer experience. ​​

How to guarantee the best experience

By using SamKnows technology you can improve your customers’ experience.  We monitor your network performance from your customer’s perspective. This allows you to provide realistic performance estimates at the point of sale, find faults beyond your own infrastructure that impact your customer experience, streamline customer support processes, and help customers optimise and maintain good network performance inside their homes. Discover how SamKnows can help turn your customers into happy, satisfied and loyal customers.

We’ve updated ConstantCare so you can have a better day

We’ve updated our ConstantCare dashboard so it’s now easy to see if a SamKnows Agent is disconnected. As a Care Agent, you will now be able to resolve customers’ queries even faster, keeping your customers calm and happy. And you can have a less stressful day.

Less stress with the new look Instant Test

We’re always improving our products, and this week, we’ve given a face lift to our Instant Test feature within the ConstantCare dashboard. As a Care Agent, you will now be able to resolve customers’ queries even faster, keeping your customers happier and meaning you have a better day.

Prove your 1Gbps speeds with SamKnows

Don't let LAN spoil the party. If you're an ISP providing a service faster than 1Gbps and struggling to prove it to your customers, SamKnows has the solution! Embed the SamKnows Router SDK inside your fleet of routers and overcome the Ethernet/Wi-Fi LAN interface bottleneck. Show your customers with a 1Gbps LAN interface that you're delivering on your ultra-fast advertising claims.

Whitebox installation instructions

Navigating the jumble of cables and wires hiding behind your router can be a daunting task for volunteers when they first set up their Whitebox. Let us show you how simple it is with a how-to video and a brief explanation of what is going on behind the scenes.

New home, new name, ConstantCare

We’re always looking to make improvements for our users, and this week we’re excited to launch our ConstantCare dashboard, designed specifically for care agents. With ConstantCare, you can resolve customers’ queries even faster.

Benefits of RealSpeed for Regulators

RealSpeed is a product we developed for ISPs, but there’s also advantages for government regulators who want to provide RealSpeed measurements to their panel of volunteers on a national study. Regulators could use the data collected to help educate their citizens and set realistic expectations about end-to-end internet performance inside the home, and also internet users can benefit from RealSpeed by using it to help them troubleshoot issues on their own.

Why are regulators encouraging ISPs to embed measurement agents in their customers' routers?

SamKnows has been embedding our extensive QoS and QoE test suite directly into ISP customers’ routers for many years – It’s a cost effective way to measure entire subscribed populations at scale. Over the last year or two, government regulators have been requesting ISPs to share the embedded data they collect to include in government reports. Why are government regulators encouraging ISPs to embed and what are they doing with the data?

How volunteer feedback made the disconnections chart more detailed

Our volunteer feedback fuels real insights and improvements of our products. Here’s an example of how just a couple volunteers helped us make necessary changes to our disconnections chart to capture tiny sub 10s disconnections that could be freezing up your Zoom calls.

Whitebox 8+

Our Whitebox 8 measurement device is by far our most popular Whitebox ever, and has been used by government regulators on 4 continents to measure speeds reliably at up to 1Gbps. We're now releasing a new version of it, creatively dubbed the Whitebox 8+. But, what is the difference? And what does this mean for our government regulator clients who use the Whitebox for their national studies?

Speed test vs speed test

Find out how standard speed tests available online differ from SamKnows speed test metrics.

Why ISPs love FaultFinder

When collecting billions of data measurements, as we do with our SamKnows agents and Whiteboxes worldwide, finding an issue is really like finding a needle... in a warehouse filled with haystacks. Faultfinder helps ISPs find that needle and literally pinpoint that fault, to help resolve issues quicker than ever.

Linksys announces SamKnows integration

SamKnows software is now inside the Linksys Velop AX4200 Tri-Band Mesh WiFi 6 System!

ACCC typical busy period speeds

Find out how SamKnows can help RSPs in Australia measure and report busy hours speeds to easily meet ACCC requirements.

Quality of Experience in the palm of your hand

Ensuring consistent and low latency is rapidly becoming the focal point for people concerned with how responsive applications are. But there's no single latency value either - latency will vary by application. This is why SamKnows is developing and adding ~40 new Quality of Experience tests to our Mobile apps. Now you can measure latency for dozens of applications accurately from the palm of your hand.

The SamKnows method of measuring internet performance

SamKnows has been pioneering internet performance measurements for over 10 years. Our reputation is built upon our methodology, we go above and beyond to ensure that the data we collect is a reliable true representation of actual end-to-end performance. This is an insight into the testing principles that make SamKnows the global leader in our field.

Moving the data pipeline

Find out more about how we're accommodating our data in a more efficient, fast-paced and scalable way with Google BigQuery.

Gaming test updated framework

Schedules are important. But when it comes to making necessary software updates to keep up with fast paced applications and other servers, we don't like waiting! ISPs upgrade their router firmware on a tight schedule that can take up months to be pushed through. To stay ahead of the game, find out how we're developing frameworks that can be used to update our 40 million+ Agents worldwide almost instantly.

Monitoring uptime and downtime

Our double test solution is our way of tackling unreliable monitoring of disconnections. Find out more about our foolproof test methodology and how we're upgrading our UI to intuitively display uptime and downtime on our Disconnections Chart with both current and historical data.

SamKnows Router Agent – another year wiser

Here’s our celebration of the software that brought our performance analytics into over 40 million homes.

New Whitebox 9 is breaking the speed limit

As the need for speed increases in broadband products, they've outstripped the physical limitations of router hardware and cannot be measured using traditional web-based speed tests. Whitebox 9 is the solution we've created for super-fast broadband monitoring all the way up to 2.5 Gbps.

Spot issues, identify the root cause, assess the impact on your customers, all in realtime

FaultFinder monitors network performance from the perspective of the end user. It builds a dynamic model of normal performance, constantly learning and re-learning to adapt to trend shifts. It compares real-time measurements against these models. When an anomaly is detected it can trace the root cause and also measure the impact of the fault in terms of performance and the volume of customers affected.

The E-Universe of Gaming

Within the next 5 years, the gaming industry is expected to double in value to an estimated worth of almost 300 billion dollars. As the gaming market rapidly excels, SamKnows is encouraging its rise with gaming tests that help game developers, ISPs, and governments understand their performance. Here's a closer look at the world of online gaming, our role within it, and our meticulous approach to building gaming tests.

Turn your Internet up to 11

Now millions of people worldwide are working from home, video conferencing demands are maxing-out the upload limit of domestic broadband connections. That's why SamKnows has designed the Internet TAP™. Simply attach the TAP (Tweak Available Performance) to your network port and plug in your router. Dial up your upload or dial down your download, find the perfect balance, improve the quality of your internet experience!

Router box on a side table next to a blue cat on a dresser

Resolving the most common ISP customer support calls with SamKnows

ISPs are responsible for delivering broadband to the home, so what happens beyond the router is largely out of their control. But problems with in-home Wi-Fi account for over 50% of the support calls ISPs receive. So even though it’s out of their control, it’s an expensive problem that ISPs need to be able to empathise with and help resolve. Join us on a user journey showing how SingleView and RealSpeed can streamline support calls and improve customer experience.

Know your internet inside and out

Know your internet inside and out

Resolving network issues quickly is the key to keeping your customers happy and loyal. SamKnows Single Home shows the network, Wi-Fi, and device performance of a single home all in one place so your support agents can do exactly that. Troubleshoot issues quickly, demonstrate home Wi-Fi issues to customers, and provide a seamless customer experience.

Accelerating the SamKnows data pipeline

Accelerating the SamKnows data pipeline

Our new data pipeline has dramatically improved the time between collecting detailed test results and making them available to our customers for analysis in SamKnows One. In the past, this process took 30 minutes. Today, it takes around 5 seconds! This acceleration will pave the way for new products acting upon real-time data. Find out what makes it so fast and how it's evolved over the years in the face of increasing demand.

Old house, new home, better Wi-Fi

When Cookie, our Head of Design, moved into his new house, he was determined to inspect his in-home Wi-Fi. Using SamKnows RealSpeed 2.0 as a guide, he used his speed test results to help improve his connectivity by 76.6Mbps! Cookie also recently appeared on George Clarke's Old House New Home, and it seemed like the perfect opportunity to bring both projects together.

ISPs, give your customers accurate performance testing with RealSpeed

Don't let home interference spoil how your customers' perceive your network performance. With SamKnows RealSpeed, your customers can run an independent speed test from the edge of their home network (at the router itself) out to a test server, accurately recording the fastest speeds available, eliminating any Wi-Fi degradation from the results, and avoiding customer confusion.

Virgin Media launches SamKnows RealSpeed

Back in March, we spoke about how internet service providers (ISPs) are using the SamKnows Router Agent to overcome the limitations of conventional speed tests and accurately measure 1Gbps+ speeds. Since then, we've been hard at work, developing the perfect solution that allows you to do the same from the comfort of your home, without using any special equipment. Find out how easy it is to use!

Website Performance Test: Part 3

This is the third of a series of articles about our new SamKnows Website Performance Test. Today, we're telling the story of how we used it to detect a hidden problem that was impossible to find any other way. We contacted Sky straight away who where then able to restore good performance for all their consumers. Read on to find out about our investigation.

DNS-over-HTTPS performance

DNS-over-HTTPS promises to prevent eavesdropping and manipulation of DNS traffic. But this has side-effects that has many ISPs concerned. One of their concerns centers on performance and the impact on their CDN relationships. We've conducted an initial study of DNS-over-HTTPS performance from homes across Europe to help separate fact from fiction.

SamKnows Website Performance Test: Part 2

At SamKnows, we have been hard at work developing a new website performance test, called the SamKnows Website Performance Test (we’re pretty “out there” with the name!). In our previous blog post, we covered the overall concept. In this blog post we look at the technology behind it.