SamKnows Whitebox.

I read about this earlier and was keen but i started to wonder what are they monitoring and what can you see i found this but does it monitor more?

https://www.samknows.com/signup

Sign up for the chance to get a free Whitebox
(available soon to buy from Amazon)

We've teamed up with hundreds of ISPs around the world to help you find out what's really going on with your internet. The SamKnows Home Dashboard will present your data in an easy-to-understand way and help diagnose any problems that you may have. Enter your details below to help improve the internet for yourself and for everyone!

If you can't wait for your ISP to get onboard, sign up anyway! We promise to give thousands of Whiteboxes away for free. Lucky recipients will be chosen as and when we have new Whiteboxes available to sign out (which is pretty much all of the time). So what are you waiting for...?

Edited by deleted (Fri 20-Oct-17 19:29:25)

Yeah, I signed up back in July and I am still waiting for one.

I think there is more chance in my getting a paid one from Amazon than there is getting a free one from SamKnows.

But we will see.

Paul

Essentially it is a hardware speed test box, and runs the tests more often than people would do by hand, meaning you generate more load on the network in your area but get nice graphs showing how you are performing, so for some who enjoy stat watching it is nirvana

I had one for a few years when I was with VM & had speed to spare - Never caused me any problems & each month as I remember I got a monthly email showing best & worst speeds, latency etc. You could log in at any times and check stats too.

It never caused my any problems apart from having another modified router linked with my SuperHub & router - It lived on my printer as space was tight then, I think it was a TP-Link? Also it wasn't white I would never buy one though.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Essentially it is a hardware speed test box, and runs the tests more often than people would do by hand, meaning you generate more load on the network in your area but get nice graphs showing how you are performing, so for some who enjoy stat watching it is nirvana

Thanks to all that have answered.

I take it "meaning you generate more load on the network in your area" is not a good thing just so you can view a few graphs, i think i will stick to the TBB speed tester now i know you can simply click through the add a postcode part.

One of the OCE's over at the TT forum has this as part of their signature - *Join our SamKnows Broadband Performance Trial* in his signature, which is where i found out about it I suppose the Whitebox would be useful if you were having speed issues but as i am not i think i will pass.


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Edited by deleted (Sat 21-Oct-17 13:06:45)

Also to add ISPs use the samknows nodes to help identify broadband problems in areas.
As I know there have been a few times where BT Consumer have used the data provided by these "nodes" to help narrow down any local issues.

I've had one since last August, I got it through a link in a TalkTalk email.

I find it useful to check my stats occasionally, for example it showed the day when TalkTalk switched their 'new' DLM on (my speed dropped!) and also when I had a router reboot after a power dropout and the SNRM went from 6dB to 2dB - and gave me an extra 1Mbps (back to my 'original' speed of 13.2Mbps.)

As far as I can remember, according to SamKnows (I can't remember where, but if I find a link I'll advise) it doesn't use a lot of bandwidth as it does a test every few hours during the day and more often in the evening. If the line is being used it doesn't always test.

A monthly 'report card' showing a summary is emailed to me each month.

They have just updated their results page to show graphs - up to 6 metrics can be selected out of about 20 sets of results; apart from download (now including single-thread) and upload there's latency, up/down jitter, website load times, DNS response times, Netflix and YouTube speeds.

Edit - I didn't see your clicky before I posted. I should have taken more care to read what you said.

Edited by vitrocmax (Sat 21-Oct-17 18:38:52)

In reply to a post by vitrocmax:

They have just updated their results page to show graphs - up to 6 metrics can be selected out of about 20 sets of results; apart from download (now including single-thread) and upload there's latency, up/down jitter, website load times, DNS response times, Netflix and YouTube speeds.

With TT's bad reputation i would have thought the last thing they would need is customers being able to see in depth stats as it will give them more to moan about.

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In reply to a post by Chippy_Tea_:

With TT's bad reputation i would have thought the last thing they would need is customers being able to see in depth stats as it will give them more to moan about.

lol

The whole of the SamKnows has been updated since I last logged in (I can't remember when that was) and there's a new FAQ section. If my clicky here works it says they don't really know how much data it uses; I did once find a figure on their website (a while ago) but I'm not going to go searching for it now, as it looks looks like it might have changed.

They also say there's a smartphone app which does similar tests to the Whitebox; you could try that for a couple of days (if you have enough data!) to see what happens...