Important to us all - Improving Digital Britain

Hello Everyone,

I�m working for a company (Actual Experience) that is doing something I think is important and interesting to all of us. Ofcom has asked us to analyse how well Digital Britain is performing and we�re working with them, ISPs and people at home to improve people�s experience of broadband.

We give our subscribers free access to the analysis we provide to Ofcom, live in their browsers. You�ll get a dashboard that shows you how well your connection can support popular applications and you can compare your broadband to our national standard.

It�s a simple, free download that will only take 2 minutes of your time. It has a very small overhead and will never look at anything you actually do with your connection or computer (see below for more details).

Join us to understand what your broadband can do, and help Ofcom and providers improve the service to consumers everywhere.

It all starts here:

http://www.actual-experience.com/bbfix


And you can see some examples of what you�ll get on our Facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/bbfix



Thank you in advance.
Kes

Consultant, Actual Experience Ltd.



Further context for those who would like it

This is some context and assurance around the main piece of this post for those that wish to investigate deeper � I want to assure the community that we are who we say we are, that our intentions are genuine and clear.

We will never release individual users� data to anyone but that specific user. Under no circumstances whatsoever is any personally identifiable information ever shared with any 3rd party (including Ofcom). Further, we never look at, capture, transmit, store or in any way see any of your content or anything you use your connection or computer for.

The software itself runs as a service, and averages 236 Kilobytes per hour when the user�s host PC or Mac (or indeed Raspberry Pi) is active. Typical usage is therefore approximately 166MB per month, with a maximum of 200MB per month; and that assumes the machine is on 24/7.

Ofcom has awarded us this contract to investigate their view that speed is not necessarily a defining factor in the quality of a user�s experience - there are many other factors that can affect that human experience in the home, ISP and wider Internet. We have a proven methodology, based upon 10 years of Academic research, that is able to determine what a user�s experience would be of a particular application if they were to use it. For more technical users, the underlying science behind this is based upon the only mature and accepted standard for quantifying human experience - Mean Opinion Score (MOS) for Voice. Our core research and Intellectual Property is an extension of the algorithms behind MOS to enable us to make that quantification for any application.

This is the second project that we have tendered for with Ofcom, and we have successfully won both within a competitive process.

For anyone who wishes to confirm our involvement with Ofcom, they have briefed their Customer Contact Team (CCT) on our relationship, who will happily answer any questions. They can be contacted on 0300 123 3333 (also published on the site - http://www.ofcom.org.uk/contact-us)

You are of course more than welcome to ask any questions of Actual Experience, either through this forum or via email: [email protected]

Further information on Actual Experience can be found on our website (http://www.actual-experience.com) and our Facebook page out the BBFix project (http://www.facebook.com/bbfix)

One of our co-founders (Professor Jonathan Pitts) is located at the Queen Mary University of London. Further relevant information can therefore be found here:

http://www.eecs.qmul.ac.uk/people/view/3154/prof-jon...

http://www.eecs.qmul.ac.uk/research/impact/actual-ex...

While you have answered many of the questions I put forward you have not absorbed some the rules and etiquette of an online forum.

YOU DO NOT CROSS POST, particularly when its copy/paste replies. When it is an end-user seeking information and perhaps has not had a reply in a couple of hours, but when it is a commercial operation the response really is WHY? If maximum exposure is needed then perhaps paid advertising with appropriate keywords to target people is the way to go.

This may sound like harsh words, but without a firm cross posting policing the site would be swamped very quickly.

A big question remains - what exactly is tested, i.e. is it latency, DNS look up times? Most of the presentation focuses on the presentation of the results rather than what the source measurements are based on.

Please accept my apologies for breach of etiquette. As you allude to, and as you would have seen from our private conversation prior to this post, I would not want to annoy and alienate a community intentionally.

It was an innocent choice to post in four forums, as the service applies in all four areas and not in a silo. I do, however, appreciate how if that happened all of the time, the forum would be swamped.

As for the big question - the source measurements are very simple, based around ICMP measurements and simple HTTP/S GETs where appropriate. How those benign and simple measurements are processed and viewed, and output via a number of algorithms into a behaviour related to individual applications, is done centrally at our Analytics Engine.

Why not just use the Think Broadband Quality Monitor?

It's saves having another process installed on your computer, and your computer doesn't even have to be switched on...

Wonder what other testing systems went up against Actual Experience in the tender process.

Just getting ready for the ISPA 2014 technical testing which pretty much looks to do the same sorts of testing and with a wee bit of funding could be extended considerably.

In reply to a post by Ripley:

Why not just use the Think Broadband Quality Monitor?

It's saves having another process installed on your computer, and your computer doesn't even have to be switched on...

Hi Ripley

Ours is slightly different, in that it captures the entire digital supply chain to several different targets out on the internet - beyond your local broadband supplier network - and also incorporates your LAN depending on where the host machine is.

It is also completely flexible around pathing or IP changes, taking this into account and accommodating them within the calculations.

As you can see from my original post, the service is designed to be very unobtrusive, and not send out huge amounts of data nor tax the host machine.

We get similar queries around existing instrumentation within large Enterprise environments - we are very keen to impress upon the fact that we do not and will not position our service as a replacement for existing toolsets, but as a complementary one. It can be used to corroborate other data, and potentially steer other tools to other potential areas that they should concentrate on.

I hope that this answers your question.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Wonder what other testing systems went up against Actual Experience in the tender process.

Just getting ready for the ISPA 2014 technical testing which pretty much looks to do the same sorts of testing and with a wee bit of funding could be extended considerably.

Very interesting - It would be intriguing to compare the methodology and techniques!

In reply to a post by Kezkay:

Hello Everyone,

I�m working for a company (Actual Experience) that is doing something I think is important and interesting to all of us. Ofcom has asked us to analyse how well Digital Britain is performing and we�re working with them, ISPs and people at home to improve people�s experience of broadband.

We give our subscribers free access to the analysis we provide to Ofcom, live in their browsers. You�ll get a dashboard that shows you how well your connection can support popular applications and you can compare your broadband to our national standard.

It�s a simple, free download that will only take 2 minutes of your time. It has a very small overhead and will never look at anything you actually do with your connection or computer (see below for more details).

Join us to understand what your broadband can do, and help Ofcom and providers improve the service to consumers everywhere.

___

It appears to me that the above post, in total , was an Advert, ,part of which I've deleted from my reply .

So it broke tbb rules ::>>quote

We do not allow users to post advertisements or commercial solicitations on our forums. This includes touting one's own equipment for sale. Advertisers wishing to take advantage of our site are welcome to contact us for banner ads. However, we do not have a problem with users posting links to their web sites in signatures, or posts provided their posts are materially useful and are not simply seeking to promote their products (e.g. recommending themselves for every query). Generally we are less tolerant of posters who do have commercial signatures when it comes to what is and is not abuse. We are less strict on ISPs posting in their own forums. Note that the restriction on advertising includes linking to schemes where you receive a commission or benefit of some kind from a user signing up.#



Actual Experience on their own site quote a charge ::>>

##Analytic fees are £20 per Analytic with a minimum of 50 Analytics per end customer.##

Hi,
I note you have a Linux client but it can not be downloaded with out first signing up.
Can you please tell me a little more about the client application.
e.g. is it script based, python / Perl etc, or maybe a C app and is the source open?

I wondered when somebody would mention fees. I'm a simple old non-techie soul and was rather puzzled by the first four posts in this thread. But when I see the words contract and consultant I keep my hand firmly around my wallet.