FCC App Lets Android Users Measure Mobile Broadband Speed

itwbennett writes "The FCC's new Android app will allow users to measure the speed of their mobile broadband connection, while providing aggregate data to the agency for measuring nationwide mobile broadband network performance. Released as open-source software on Thursday, the free FCC Speed Test App will test network performance for parameters such as upload and download speed, latency and packet loss. An iPhone version of the app is in the works."

Comments

Re:Tempting... but no thanks.

[aitikin]

Being that it's open sourced, I'll wait 2 months and someone will audit the code, then I'll consider it. (yes, I don't know enought o do that myself).

Re:Tempting... but no thanks.

[simonbp]

What precisely are you afraid of? And I'm being serious, what could the app access that you find worrying? It does grab your location, but that is trivial for any law enforcement agency these days.

If this app helps the FCC ensure that wireless companies are honest, I'm all for it.

By mobile broadband they mean....

[icebike]

I have this installed, and it keeps separate track of BOTH wifi measurements and cellular network measurements.
But it measures both, and allows you to swipe left and right to see each measurement it took.

What I've learned: My carrier is pretty pathetic.

Note
Being Open source, you can see exactly what is being reported, but I predict that won't stop the tinfoil hat crowd from claiming the binary does not reflect the source code.

Re:By mobile broadband they mean....

[girlintraining]

What I've learned: My carrier is pretty pathetic.

They're all very pathetic. They're oversubscribed by many thousands to one; Your shittiest cable provider doesn't hold a candle to how pathetically oversubscribed the average mobile provider is. These towers typically only have a T1 backhaul... it only takes a couple of phones to saturate those links. You will never, ever, get the full-rated OTA speed. Anywhere.

And they employ super-massive buffers; They're the reason buffer-bloat has become a problem. Latencies far above what even 90s-era modems provide -- 500, 800ms easy. Bandwidth is irregular and employs highly manipulated QoS to allow access to a select few websites at full speed, while taking the piss out of the rest of them -- there's a reason Facebook loads quick, while a site like, say, Slashdot, takes 30 seconds or more.

The FCC needs to not just run bandwidth tests, but suss out their QoS; People need to show that anything but the top 50 websites give absolutely terrible performance. You can get your google results in seconds, but it might take several minutes to load up the homepage of the restaurant you were searching for.

Re:By mobile broadband they mean....

[Shakrai]

Verizon pulls fiber to their base stations wherever possible.

T1s would be a nightmare. The current 2x10mhz LTE network tops out at about 75mbit/s down and 18mbit/s up. Multiply that by three (most base stations have three sectors), then add more bandwidth to account for each of the 3G Ev-DO channels (3mbit/s down and about 1.8mbit/s up) provided, multiply that number by three, then add a non zero amount for voice service (9.6kbit/s per call with current CDMA codecs, 13kbit/s for older codecs), SS7 signaling and other overhead.....

T1s barely scaled to meet demand for the Ev-DO network, where you had to contend with a demand for at least 9mbit/s (3mbit/s times three sectors) of data, in reality more than that since they typically allocate at least two channels for Ev-DO service, and you still need to have bandwidth for voice and signaling service. To meet that sort of demand you're talking about twelve or more bonded T-1s, and at that point you may as well just use a microwave repeater to reach those rural base stations where it's cost prohibitive to pull fiber.

Re:Tempting... but no thanks.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm much more concerned about the telecos identifying this software and gaming the results.

Good! Then I'll write my Apps to mimic the requests sent out by the FCC App.
Once the teleco switches my connection into "high speed for great rankings!" mode, my App will switch into "all your bandwidth are belong to us" mode!

Re:Tempting... but no thanks.

[icebike]

Won't be useful, unless you want to do nothing but download the same chunk of data over and over again.

We can only hope that the authors were wise enough to request randomly named data blocks from randomly selected data servers, because otherwise we will be measuring the effectiveness of the carriers cache at the nearest tower base.

Re:Tempting... but no thanks.

[Charliemopps]

What precisely are you afraid of?

I'm sorry, but that's none of your business.

Re:Tempting... but no thanks.

[artor3]

Why are you dodging the question? The GP wasn't making one of those fallacious "nothing to hide" arguments. He was correctly pointing out that this test doesn't provide the government with any useful spying information.

It collects your location at the time you run the test (you can uninstall it afterwards), your phone model & carrier info (which they already have easy access to), and... that's it.

So again, what exactly are you afraid of?

Re:Tempting... but no thanks.

[Charliemopps]

So again, what exactly are you afraid of?

And again, it's none of your fucking business. I can chose not to use an application written by an entity that have absolutely no trust in. What I have to hide is everything. They have no right to know anything about me that they do not explicitly need to know. By asking me "What are you afraid of?" you're indicating that I couldn't possibly be afraid of this innocuous app and you're asking me to defend my abstinence with an explanation of how the app could be used against me or to incriminate me. The point of fact is, it's none of your business why I chose not to use the app. I do not have to explain myself. My choices and my reasons for them are my own and not subject to peer review. This fact is what needs to change about modern society. You have no right to know why I chose not to trust my government.

Re:Tempting... but no thanks.

[FlyHelicopters]

I can chose not to use an application written by an entity that have absolutely no trust in. What I have to hide is everything.

That sounds reasonable, except that you're using a phone in the US that is, by design, not secure to those three letter agencies.

So... they don't need you to run this app to get access to your phone, it is hard-wired into the chips (installing a clean version of Android doesn't help with that).

You can't turn off the location, you can't turn off the camera and sound, and you can't disable it, unless you remove the battery. (turning off the camera in options disables it for apps that you install, not to the chips themselves. You'd have to rip the GPS chip out, for example, to actually disable location monitoring.)

So, if you really feel that way, why would you have a phone that they have access to?

Note: I'm not knocking your position or saying that you're wrong, maybe you have a reason to care, maybe you simply choose to because you believe in the 4th amendment and your privacy. More power to you. But you give that up by using a phone that is already open to them.

Re:Tempting... but no thanks.

[FlyHelicopters]

Yep, releasing the code says: "We don't care about you or your contacts, your location, or anything else, we just want to see how fast the cell network is running and gather data on that."

Frankly, it is part of the FCC's job, this is something they *should* be doing, so more power to them.

The FCC is charged with regulating the airwaves of the United States, so this is part of their publicly stated function.

Re:Tempting... but no thanks.

[icebike]

P.S.: The cell towers NEED to know roughly where the phone is if it is to be able to be used.

Don't anthropomorphize cell towers, they hate that.

They don't NEED to know anything. Your phone is programmed to find all the cell towers it can "hear" to and connect to the one with the strongest signal from its preferred roaming list. It is strictly controlled by the phone, not the tower. Once your phone connects, the tower updates a database so that calls can be routed to it when your number is called.

If you are moving, your phone will periodically find stronger towers, and register to those towers, while keeping the channel on the old tower. As soon as the tower you are leaving reaches a low enough signal, the call will jump seamlessly to the new tower.

Towers themselves are really rather dumb about which phones are in their area, its up to the phone to connect to the tower, not the other way around.