Quality of Service tests

Measuring of the performance of the service provided

Speed tests

Speed is the primary measure by which broadband connections are sold, so clearly it's important to measure it. We offer a variety of different mechanisms to measure speed.

Supported agents:

Whiteboxes, Routers, Android, iOS

Download and upload (TCP)

Our standard speedtest, used on Whiteboxes, CPE and mobile apps.

Lightweight capacity test (UDP)

An alternative speedtest that is ultra lightweight in terms of bandwidth usage and time.

Download and upload (HTML5)

A WebSockets and XHR based speedtest for use in web browsers.

Hardware-accelerated UDP speed test

This speedtest can take advantage of specific Broadcom and Qualcomm hardware to measure extremely high speeds.

Latency, loss and jitter

Latency, packet loss and jitter affect everything you do on the internet. If these fare badly, then every other test will fare badly. So they are critical to measure.

Supported agents:

Whiteboxes, Routers, Android, iOS

Latency and packet loss (UDP)

Our standard, continuous latency and loss measure, used on Whiteboxes and CPE.

Contiguous packet loss / disconnections (UDP)

An enhancement to our standard latency test that tracks outages/disconnections.

Latency, jitter and packet loss (UDP) 

An instance-based latency and loss measure, typically used in mobile apps.

Latency (HTML5)

A test that measures latency over WebSockets, suitable for use in web browsers.

Latency and packet loss (ICMP)

Measure latency and packet loss using good old ICMP pings.

DNS resolution

The Domain Name System (DNS) converts a hostname (such as www.example.com) into a computer-friendly IP address (such as 192.168.1.1). Every time a user wants to load a webpage, this translation must occur, this test measures how long it takes. It’s configurable and can test against a target DNS server, over UDP or DNS-over-HTTPS.

Supported agents:

Whiteboxes, Routers, Android, iOS

Measurements

A success/failure status, and a failure reason if applicable.

The DNS resolution time (if successful). Note that this excludes DOH setup time, if the query is made over DOH.

The resolved record (e.g. an IPv4 address if the query was for an A record).

The DOH server hostname resolution time, TCP connection time and SSL handshake time.

Mobile environment

SamKnows mobile apps collect a large amount of environmental information that provides a detailed picture of how networks are performing. This information is anonymous and does not include any personal data.

Supported agents:

Android, iOS

More info:

Data recorded

Carrier Name

Country code

Operating System Version

Device model and manufacturer

Latitude & longitude

Plus many more. See factsheet for full details

Voice over IP

Voice over IP services are increasingly replacing landline telephones. Our tests allow these services to be measured using industry standard protocols.

The Voice over IP (VoIP) test measures the quality of a voice call between the client and a nearby test server. It is intended to characterise how suitable the user's broadband connection is for placing and receiving VoIP calls.

Supported agents:

Whiteboxes, Routers

Measurements

Round trip latency

Downstream packet loss

Upstream packet loss

Downstream jitter

Upstream jitter

MOS (Mean Opinion Score)