Make Sure You’re Getting 100% Of Your Internet Connection

Net Neutrality is the concept that all information on the internet is equal, this means that if it’s you sending a message on facebook or someone else in your house playing a game, all the data being sent from your house across the world is treated equally. This concept means companies can’t pick and choose what data is slowed down so other bits of data can get somewhere quicker.

The Internet Health-checker tests your internet connection for just that, by sending random bits of data to locations outside of your internet providers network. This lets it see if there are jumps or bumps in how fast your internet connection is. But you’re not alone, when you test the connection it anonymously compares the data with others from the same provider, letting Fight For The Future check and see what companies, if any, are throttling internet users.

You may think that this is obvious, but some companies and even internet service providers (ISP’s) have made moves so that you or companies can pay for a better connection. The most famous of these examples was Comcast and Netflix, in which Comcast negotiated with Netflix to deliver smoother downloads to its customers in exchange for a small fee. The difference in the connection prior to the agreement and then after can be seen in the graph below.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) reclassified the Internet in America in February to prevent actions like this, in which companies could create fast and slow lanes, essentially making customers and internet based companies pay premiums for better speeds, while throttling the connections of people who were not willing to pay for the “premium” bundles.

I welcome any move that helps prevent fast lanes being created on the internet, the concept of reducing someone’s service so you can charge them and others more for a better service seems counter-intuitive to attracting customers to your company, with those found doing this caught and shamed publically online.

What’s your internet health like? Is your consistency high or is there a risk that your ISP is throttling your connection?

Thank you LifeHacker and Battle For The Net for the information.

Images courtesy of InternetHealthTest, The Washington Post and Netflix.