racoma.com.phJ. Angelo Racoma on technology, economics, writing, problogging, and getting things done

There are a lot of bandwidth checking tools around, but speakeasy.net/speedtest and speedtest.net are a few of my favorites because of their simplicity. Also, speedtest.net lets me compare the speed of my local connection to the speed of my actual connection to the world (see my previous post ranting about Sky’s speed problems of late).

I’ve been trying to do some speed testing just recently, when I noticed I couldn’t access both speedtest.net and speakeasy.net . I initially thought that either these two services were down or I was having problems connecting to the rest of the world (much like during the December Taiwan earthquake, where the country’s major pipes were severed).

But I tried accessing these sites from a remote server I had management access to, and I could connect fine (speed was really fast, actually). I asked friends on other ISPs and the sites were also okay from their end. So I got suspicious and did some more network testing. It seems that whenever I try to access either of these sites, I just keep going around in circles, and I don’t really get beyond the Bayantel / SkyDSL servers. I’m stuck between 7600-gw4.bti.net.ph and gatewaynet-v50-rsvt-7606.bti.net.ph, which I assume are both Bayantel’s servers because of the bti.net.ph domain.

See screenshots of traceroute operations below.

Trying to access speedtest.net

Trying to access speakeasy.net/speedtest

I’m wondering if this is a deliberate move by Sky to prevent users from testing their DSL vs. practical connection speeds.

There are still alternatives, of course. There is dslreports.com/stest and bandwidthplace.com/speedtest . Of coures, there’s ookla.com, but as of my last checking, that site isn’t accessible either! And guess what–I get the similar traceroute results.

Something’s fishy here, Bayantel. You know I often recommend you guys whenever someone asks me about broadband/DSL. Now I might point people elsewhere.