Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Android Can Now Tell You How Fast Wi-Fi Networks Are Before You Join Them (theverge.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the decisions-decisions dept.

Today, Google announced that Android 8.1 Oreo will now display the speed of nearby open Wi-Fi networks to help you decide whether they're even worth the effort of connecting to. The Wi-Fi settings menu will now display one of four speed labels: Very Fast, Fast, OK, or Slow. The Verge reports: The difference between Very Fast and Fast, according to Google, is that you can stream "very high-quality videos" on the former and "most videos" on the latter. Most coffee shop dwellers should be fine with the OK level, as that's enough for web browsing, social media, and Spotify streaming. Private Wi-Fi networks that require passwords don't display any speed data since it's really none of your business and Google can't randomly test them, but they do continue to indicate signal strength. Google says network administrators can also opt out of Android's Wi-Fi Assistant showing speed info by using a "canary URL."

44 comments

  1. Android DDOS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So every time an Android user walks by they're going to speed test all the open APs in the area? With enough people that sounds like it would cause more harm than good.

    1. Re: Android DDOS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No actually google devices have been doing this for years.
      That's how they have a list.
      They've also been using Google Maps to "be more accurate" by messing with wifi APs as you drive around.
      Google Maps always says "turn on wifi for increased accuracy" but I'm driving how am I going to be around long enough to connect? Apparently google solved that long ago.

    2. Re: Android DDOS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      The thing Maps does is just enumerate networks and signal strengths. Based on data from lots of users, Google knows the location of these APs so it can get a better idea of location by triangulating the networks it sees.

      All that has nothing to do with speeds. I'm guessing they've also been collecting speed data for a while - either by speed testing or just monitoring the speeds that apps that move a lot of data like Maps and YouTube are seeing when connected to a network. I'm guessing it's probably the latter since nobody has been posting about hundreds of phones DDOSing their networks with speed tests, and because Google has no reason to waste people's bandwidth and battery doing it when they can just measure speeds of real data being loaded from servers they know can go faster.

    3. Re: Android DDOS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      One nitpick: It's trilateration (with signal strength as a proxy for closeness), not triangulation. Regarding the speed testing, I also think Google just measures download speed of Android devices accessing Google services. But, they could do much more sneaky things. There's a URL that Android devices access when they join an open network. That URL could very well instruct Android devices to do some measuring of their own, and this would not necessarily result in a DDOS attack on the Wifi network, because the instructions could be given to only a few devices each hour/day/week. Android devices could be (or are, depending on your point of view) the largest botnet out there, and we give the bots access to all our networks...

    4. Re: Android DDOS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Keep drinking that GoolAide man.

      There's no reason to use wifi APs that may not even exist where I'm going when Maps works just fine on LTE and GPS.

      They're using our phones to map out where the APs are. Then they're using PCs connected to Search, gmail or YouTube to analyze the APs.

      Everything about this is fishy.

      The only people who want a map of APs are criminals. This will help ID theives more than pirates, but it will help them too. A map of unsecured wifi will lead to massive ID and CC theft.

      I already saw one episode of COPS where they bust a dude sitting in a truck stealing ID and CC info from wifi.

  2. prioritization by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Can they spend their efforts on smooth hand-off between WIFI and mobile data so poor WIFI won't lock up network connectivity?

    1. Re:prioritization by sexconker · · Score: 1

      A thousand times, this!

      Opening up Pokemon GO as I walk out the door is a nightmare.

    2. Re:prioritization by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Your life is a joke.

    3. Re: prioritization by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Know, you're lifes, a joke you idit. !

  3. Re: "Very Fast" means nothing to me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The used to offer no info about speed. Now they are offering broad info about speed, but you are annoyed that its not enough? Bitch bitch bitch

  4. Confirming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Google Translate:

    "We actively connect to open WiFi networks anyway and for us to detect its speed, we'd call home to our Google networks by sending data to each of those networks to Geolocate each one of them. It's something that we'd do anyway, but we're just making it public now. We're disclosing it now, so please don't call us evil. Doesn't matter, we don't care since there are only a small handful of you out there that cares about privacy anyway. But we'll tap into your peer's and stranger's connection who happen to be next to you, to retrieve voice data and camera images. This is how we're making the world a better place. Because. Terrorists. We're doing it to make society safe. This makes us better human beings. Oh, and gender pay equality. This is our brand and our brand of doing the right things in the world. We have the responsibility of protecting our users from terrorists."

    1. Re:Confirming by Kellamity · · Score: 1

      Can they actually geolocate routers? I always thought it would be valuable to display the distance you are from the router. When connection is crap you'd know if you were getting closer if you walked around. You could work out what shop to stand in front of to leach their wifi. You could track the router down in order to reset it so everyone else gets booted. I wonder if this info is possible to calculate. The developer blog mentions nothing about wifi in the 8.1 updates. For Googles use only, not fpr app developers?

    2. Re:Confirming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes they can. Cell phones are continuously calling-home to the cell phone towers that pin point your exact location. Once wifi is enabled, the it would give a very close radius of where the router is.

      To get better accuracy all it takes is for the android phone user to move around with their phone - once the wifi connection is out of range, it knows where the outer bound of the radius is.

    3. Re:Confirming by SuiteSisterMary · · Score: 1

      Yes, and they all do it. Upload the mac address of the router, and your current GPS location. Then, an iPod Touch or whatever that doesn't have a GPS chip can, never the less, connect, phone home, and get a fair approximation of location for location service purposes.

      Back when I did ISP tech support, it wasn't uncommon for people to need to replace their router for one reason or another, then call us bitching mightily that their location services on their non-GPS enabled devices stopped working properly.

      --
      Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
  5. Re:"Very Fast" means nothing to me by mrbester · · Score: 1

    I suppose it is because for most, the numbers wouldn't mean much either. You might know how much bandwidth in bits per second you require to stream a H265 media file without stuttering, but the common user wouldn't even know they are streaming. It's just "playing a big GIF" to them.

    --
    "Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
  6. How? by markdavis · · Score: 4, Informative

    Exactly how does one know how "fast" a WiFi network is without "joining" it? All you can tell is what the signal strength is (something already shown), the frequency, and the protocol (a/b/g/n/whatever). None of those will tell you how fast your actual Internet speed will be without connecting to it and trying it. It might indicate a cap on top theoretical speed, but how useful is that?

    I mean, a 100% signal perfect signal on an N access point with nobody else connected to it that is on a saturated uplink which manages 0.1 Mb/s with horrendous latency is pretty crappy.

    Are they saying that your Android device will, behind the scenes, actually connect to everything it can, without asking you, and TEST the link? What does that do for battery life? How much will that delay your connecting? How does that interfere with networks you have specifically chosen to automatically connect? How accurate is a quick test that might have touched the worst few seconds of use in the last hour?

    Or is this based on Google "sharing" speed information from one user into a cloud database? I don't see how that is going to be very accurate either- things change constantly. And that speed rating will very much depend on your EXACT signal quality.

    More questions than answers... the article doesn't help much, either.

    1. Re:How? by del_diablo · · Score: 1

      Remember, if its something smart, the implementation must be stupid.
      So all it has to do, is to poke at it. So if it broadcasts to you, you already got a signal to sample.
      So if you can tell the connection limit of that, by the wireless signal standard, you can basically guess the max speed, since its far lower than what the cabled broadband in the back of the shop actually is.

    2. Re:How? by mark-t · · Score: 1

      So all it has to do, is to poke at it.

      Can you say denial of service attack?

      --
      File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
    3. Re:How? by mykro76 · · Score: 2

      I'm gonna go with cloud database. The article links to a FAQ that indicates you can turn this new feature off by changing a "Network Rating Provider" option from "Google" to "none". From what I can tell this option was actually introduced in the Android 8.0 preview back in May 2017, so they've had some time to build up a backend.

    4. Re:How? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I imagine that once you connect to the network yourself, Android will measure how fast the network is and save the results in the cloud while averaging the speed over all previous connections. Android can then pull this info from the cloud and display it to someone else who might want to connect to the same network.

    5. Re:How? by markdavis · · Score: 1

      Yeah, that seems to be what they are doing based on additional research. I think in many ways, this will be a DIS-service to the end users- presenting constantly inaccurate/outdated or irrelevant information. A whole lot of complexity with little real-world meaning.

    6. Re:How? by mjwx · · Score: 1

      Exactly how does one know how "fast" a WiFi network is without "joining" it? All you can tell is what the signal strength is (something already shown), the frequency, and the protocol (a/b/g/n/whatever). None of those will tell you how fast your actual Internet speed will be without connecting to it and trying it. It might indicate a cap on top theoretical speed, but how useful is that?

      More questions than answers... the article doesn't help much, either.

      Are you sure you read TFA? [quote]Private Wi-Fi networks that require passwords donâ(TM)t display any speed data since itâ(TM)s really none of your business and Google canâ(TM)t randomly test them, but they do continue to indicate signal strength.[/quote] This implies that the network will be joined, tested and disconnected. If you don't want to participate you can block the "canary URL" or just put a password on your wifi like most people do. As its going end to end across the internet, you can test latency between each point like a traceroute.... in fact exactly like a traceroute so you'd know if the source of the latency is the connection (device to gateway), last mile or over the internet.

      --
      Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
    7. Re:How? by SuiteSisterMary · · Score: 1

      Or that, in addition to uploading mac, ssid and location data for random Wi-Fi networks, it's now also uploading speed test results.

      --
      Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
    8. Re:How? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If they actually are connecting to open access points and testing the speed, why not display the speed? Not everyone wants things dumbed down!

    9. Re:How? by tlhIngan · · Score: 1

      Or it can do a combination of signal strength and speed and try to figure it out that way. After all an 802.11ac signal is worthless if it's weak but you have a stronger N signal nearby or things like that.

      A long long time ago, I had a WiFi card that could connect to an 802.11g AP on the 10th floor from the 3rd through a concrete-and-steel building. This was annoying because I had an 802.11b AP nearby that would because of its proximity and greater signal strength be faster than the 802.11g one would because the distance.

      And yes, it actually did work, but wasn't that fast.

    10. Re: How? by Brockmire · · Score: 1

      It's even worse. They have no insight into retries, hidden nodes, and periodic loads. In an always powered decent radio, you can look at channel utilization to see estimate load levels, but none of this shit is bang on or all that accurate. Since most socs are Qualcomm, hopefully they build in their spectrum analyzer functionality in future chips usually only in their enterprise chipsets. That would allow for a much better representation of better AP selection.

  7. Re:"Very Fast" means nothing to me by Calydor · · Score: 2

    This is a growing frustration in general - various games and programs have also switched to keeping secret the size of a given patch. You barely even know you're downloading something, and you certainly don't get to know how MUCH you're downloading. Discord is really bad with this, and Twitch's "Downloading file X of Y" is just laughably useless.

    --
    -=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
  8. YouTube and Netflix by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Well, they clearly collect and publish aggregate speed data for ISPs by neighborhood, and they have location and network stack access on Android phones. I'll bet that they state it by location and SSID, and correlate by time of day.

  9. Canary URL? by Templer421 · · Score: 1

    Does it Tweet?

  10. I have 8.1.0 on my Pixel by surfdaddy · · Score: 2

    ...and as of right now I don't see any evidence of that capability. Perhaps in a further point release?

    1. Re:I have 8.1.0 on my Pixel by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I have 8.1.0 on my Nexus 6p and I don't see it either.

  11. My guess by nehumanuscrede · · Score: 1

    is they're simply determining what the connection speed is between you and the AP. ( 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac )

    There is no way to know the bandwidth between the AP and the router / ISP without connecting to it and physically checking it.

    It will have one hell of a time determining mine as I disable wi-fi unless I need it while I'm out and about.

    1. Re: My guess by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Google has speed test built into search and YouTube. They save that info for later. It is now later.

    2. Re:My guess by Actually,+I+do+RTFA · · Score: 1

      It connects and runs a speedtest automatically.

      --
      Your ad here. Ask me how!
  12. Evokes Memories of Circa-1999 Napster by theodp · · Score: 1

    Napster "Speed" column: DSL, Cable, 56K, 14.4, Unknown

  13. Re:"Very Fast" means nothing to me by pnutjam · · Score: 1

    I monitor my daily data usage on the router. Mostly so I can call out whichever kid is using the most data.
    Xbox uses alot of data.

    --
    Cheap storage VM.
  14. opt out HOW? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    > To opt out, you can block access to a canary URL (https://check.g-tun.com/connect) and return a response other than a status code 200 with a response body of "OK.”

    How does one return a status code to an HTTPS request you don't have the private key for? Do they intentionally not validate the certificate or something?