Samknows query on website loading

For several weeks now, my Samknows box has been reporting issues with website loading times. I haven't noticed a difference personally, but it seems to have been going on for a while.

https://imgur.com/a/nkLUY

Anyone else experiencing anything?

Mark

I'm seeing the same for my Sky fibre 38 service

Load times
Problem
3.64 s



Other stuff looks fine:

Download
Last test 37.2 Mbps
Advertised 38 Mbps
% of advertised 97.8 %
Best performance 37.4 Mbps
% of best 99.4 %

Upload
Last test 8.92 Mbps
Advertised 10 Mbps
% of advertised 89.2 %
Best performance 9.33 Mbps
% of best 95.6 %

Packet Loss
Packets Lost
Very good
0.00 %
an hour ago

Mine is reporting fine on Infinity. Have you tried rebooting the Samknows box?

Hadn't thought of that. Have just given it a reboot and will see what happens.

Cheers

Samknows box re- booted and rested, no difference.

OK, next question. Have you rebooted the router? Have you tried your own pings to sites to see what they are?

How often do they give out these White Boxes?

I have been on a waiting list since July.

Paul

I have no idea - had mine for some years now. It is on contract to Ofcom so if they have enough people for their testing then they may not currently be financing any new ones, might be that the queue will only get processed as and when people drop off from the testing and even then they might be picky over ISP and service type to make sure they get a representative sample.

Yes, router has been re- booted. I can't really see any difference in browsing myself and a ping to my website doesn't show anything too bad (I don't think).


C:\Users\Mark>ping www.

Pinging .me.uk [92.48.108.230] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 92.48.108.230: bytes=32 time=12ms TTL=54
Reply from 92.48.108.230: bytes=32 time=12ms TTL=54
Reply from 92.48.108.230: bytes=32 time=12ms TTL=54
Reply from 92.48.108.230: bytes=32 time=13ms TTL=54

Ping statistics for :
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 12ms, Maximum = 13ms, Average = 12ms

I've had mine about 8 years now, so it is ancient in terms of equipment. Maybe I got it originally because I was in a sub 2 meg area, but can't really remember now.

Not sure how good it is now the interface has changed, don't seem to be able to get as much useful user info.

Samknows box re- booted and rested, no difference.

Kitz forum....someone had a reply from Sam

http://forum.kitz.co.uk/index.php/topic,20379.msg356...

Ian

Thanks for that link. Had a read and seems nothing too sinister apart from a few tweaks being made by Samknows. It doesn't affect my browsing habits, so I shan't worry too much about it.

Mark

In reply to a post by ian72:

I have no idea - had mine for some years now. It is on contract to Ofcom so if they have enough people for their testing then they may not currently be financing any new ones, might be that the queue will only get processed as and when people drop off from the testing and even then they might be picky over ISP and service type to make sure they get a representative sample.

Just received an email "You have been selected to recieve a Whitebox" just completed and submitted the last part of the form

Paul

Just an update, I just received the White Box in the post and is now all connected up.

I have been given version 08 of the hardware if that means anything to anyone.

This is what it looks like >> here << not sure how good it will handle all us here using the internet, but it seems to handle it ok so far shown below:



I have also just received the confirmation email with my login details from them.

So only tile will tell.

Paul

Different to mine, but mine is quite old now. That said, the interface has changed recently and the website loading time doesn't even show as a result now!!

Mark

In reply to a post by Discus:

Different to mine, but mine is quite old now. That said, the interface has changed recently and the website loading time doesn't even show as a result now!!

Mark

Yeah, it shows for me (I think) but its just not selectable.

Paul

I may have missed something here but Website Loading Times shows for me in the new interface (it can be selected on the left hand side - but I think it only allows a maximum of 6 selections so if you have 6 you would have to deselect one to turn it on). The tile then also has a link to the analytics or you can go directly to the analytics and choose it from the Metric's dropdown.

Yeah, I just disabled a few and selected the Website loading and yes it only allows a maximum of 6 graphs to be displayed, bit silly considering its logging them all anyway.

TBH, I thought it logged the load times of all the sites you went to, I can see iTunes, YouTube, Netflix, why its listed FIFA and also give it info when none of us have gone there.

What I have learned is at 21:00 our connection drops down from 310Mbit to around 150Mbit, so we loose 50% of our connection.
Upload isn't affected at all, so its down to other people streaming etc.

Overall I am liking the White Box, I was expecting more information to be logged, but I am still happy with it.

Paul

I don't think the sites tested have any relation to what you do with your connection - they are just sites chosen by them presumably to be representative of UK users. The box should be doing nothing to scan what you use the Internet for and so should be completely dumb from that perspective.

In reply to a post by ian72:

I don't think the sites tested have any relation to what you do with your connection - they are just sites chosen by them presumably to be representative of UK users. The box should be doing nothing to scan what you use the Internet for and so should be completely dumb from that perspective.

Well that would defeat the point of using the White Box if its not scanning the sites we go to and list how fast / slow the load time was etc.

I was also hoping it would show the load times, packet loss, etc for Twitch.

The reason being is Twitch buffers like hell no matter what I do, yet I can watch like 6 or so 4K live streams on YouTube at the same time all fine with no buffering what so ever.

I get 4ms latency when I ping the actual server the video is being streamed from, so its not a latency issue.

Also other people (i.e. friends) on a much lower connection speed who are not with BT (i.e. they are with Virgin Media and Sky etc) up north have no issues with Twitch what so ever.

Paul

Where in the interface does it show which sites were tested? I couldn't find an option to display that.

The Box is there to test things for Ofcom to get a comparative view over a representative user base - the fact we get to see the data is in some ways an added bonus to thank us for our involvement. Ofcom is who define what should be tested working with Samknows. I'm guessing Twitch hasn't registered enough on their radar to test, they test Netflix and Youtube but don't test Amazon Prime Video which is a pretty big supplier as well.

In reply to a post by ian72:

Where in the interface does it show which sites were tested? I couldn't find an option to display that.

Oh it doesn't display sites we go to, it does show Netflix, YouTube, iPlayer, FIFA, shown in this image below.
Here it show the very basic info.

In reply to a post by ian72:

The Box is there to test things for Ofcom to get a comparative view over a representative user base - the fact we get to see the data is in some ways an added bonus to thank us for our involvement. Ofcom is who define what should be tested working with Samknows. I'm guessing Twitch hasn't registered enough on their radar to test, they test Netflix and Youtube but don't test Amazon Prime Video which is a pretty big supplier as well.

I do agree with you, I was just hoping for a bit more info that's all.

Paul

That is not customised based on what you do and it isn't website visits (which is what I thought you were talking about) but specific technology tests (for instance Netflix testing the streaming capabilities).

We do though have 2 different versions of the interface. I did used to have one that looked like yours but I no longer have the checkboxes and just have 6 dropdown sections where I can select the specific metric for each of the 6 "tiles". They may well be doing some A/B testing where some users have one version and some the other.

Possibly.

I have just spoken to SamKnows and the adding of Twitch and Amazon Prime Video are on their to-do list, but it requires a lot of setting up.

So maybe later on it will be added

Paul

Testing actual Twitch streaming and its two types of testing...the broadcaster and the viewer

OR

creating something that is similar in theory to the packet patterns used by twitch?

If I recall the Netflix testing uses the API that should mean the file is served from a CDN, and thus on the larger providers this will often be on-net.

Given all the changes on speeds in advertising the next few months are not an ideal time to deploy changes to how you test connections, and increasing test options will increase the data consumption too.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Testing actual Twitch streaming and its two types of testing...the broadcaster and the viewer

OR

creating something that is similar in theory to the packet patterns used by twitch?

If I recall the Netflix testing uses the API that should mean the file is served from a CDN, and thus on the larger providers this will often be on-net.

Given all the changes on speeds in advertising the next few months are not an ideal time to deploy changes to how you test connections, and increasing test options will increase the data consumption too.

Not sure.

All they said was the following:

The Whitebox itself does the video streaming by connecting to the video server as a client. It uses your internet connection to connect to the video server so ultimately it is still testing what kind of video performance you get from your connection specifically.

Not too sure how it will work, due to some top streamers on Twitch get priority over lower level Twitch streamers.

Paul