Fast.com: Netflix internet connection speed test - <AUTHOR> https://fast.com/ <comment><USER2> This is from Netflix, it downloads Netflix content and reports the speed back.

This is important because unlike your average Internet speed test (which ISPs take pains to optimize), there's a very real possibility that your ISP is happy to let your Netflix experience suffer - assuming they don't throttle it outright - as previously mentioned on HN:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7183682](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7183682)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7853603](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7853603)

<comment><USER3> I've had a tech who came to deal with a reported issue I was having tell me to test on a specific Time Warner Cable speed test. He then got upset/flustered when I used a different speed test to demonstrate that the issue was still present. I had to explain that I use the internet connection I was paying for to do things on domains that aren't owned and optimized by TWC.

<comment><USER4> To give the tech the benefit of the doubt, it's possible that he just isn't certain he can trust other speed tests. They may point to issues beyond his control.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, it's tough to find the line of when to stop giving the benefit of the doubt though. I was using speedtest.net at the time, which is pretty well known and widely used. I had also had multiple visits recently regarding the issue that still had not been resolved, and so my impatience made the decision for me.

<comment><USER5> For what it's worth, ISPs are definitely shaping traffic to try to game results on public speed tests.

I had an issue with Comcast last year where I would have large latency spikes for ~2 hours every night, and speedtest.net always remained at normal latency: [https://i.fluffy.cc/kNCxLMbkF2wx7NHFJxbzcgX35Bsb5nvl.png](https://i.fluffy.cc/kNCxLMbkF2wx7NHFJxbzcgX35Bsb5nvl.png)

I couldn't find any non-speedtest sites where my latency was less than 100ms, but Comcast's own speed test, several other public speed tests, speedtest.net, and even ookla.com (the company behind speedtest.net) were perfect (the ~20ms you see on the graph).

<comment><USER6> Speedtest.net and other speedtests often choose the speedtest server that's close to you and has low ping.

What you describe is probably congestion in the network somewhere that isn't the last mile. Speed tests aren't a good indicator for any issues occurring anywhere but the last mile, as they won't take the same path with fairly high probability.

<comment><USER7> Given that he has a nice graph with hundreds of data points, I'm guessing he got the ping results from the ping command, not by running the speedtest.net test(which would actually select the lowest ping server)

<comment><USER6> You're right, though I had assumed he was pinging whatever server speedtest had selected, which may be erronous.

Really, my point was that congestion is often localized in a network. The fact that it isn't present in a path doesn't mean it's an ISP gaming speed tests - though perhaps they'd be more keen on peering directly and avoiding congested transit if it makes them look better, and I would absolutely believe that would happen.

<comment><USER8> I think the argument is that the speed tests are testing ideal/non real-world usage. That seems an awful lot like gaming the results. A more realistic, indicative speed test might hit several servers at points around the country, or even world. Most of my internet traffic is not hitting a server on the outskirts of town or in the next small city over.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Cool. I just redirected [http://slow.com](http://slow.com) to [https://fast.com](https://fast.com) .

<comment><USER10> If I owned that I'd point it at comcast.com, but that's just me.

<comment><USER11> For what it's worth, I've had Comcast nearly 4 years and I'd say 80% of the time, at least, the speed is great and I get more than what I pay for.

Occasionally at really odd times (mostly middle of the night) I'll get a disconnection from service, but that hasn't happened in a long time, and maybe twice in the past 4 months my speed has dropped pretty sharply. But for the latter, when compared to the service I've gotten the entire time, it's just a blip.

The customer service is absolutely awful though, unless by some odd luck I can get forwarded to their corporate offices in the US.

<comment><USER12> I work from home, which means I'm hyper-sensitive to my internet quality. I also sometimes work through the night to early in the morning.

I've found that my Comcast connection here in San Francisco fairly reliably drops for a few minutes every day at around 2-3 am. Then it comes back and works find again. I've thought about calling them about this before, but I'm not sure that I want to spend a couple hours on the phone convincing them it's a real issue.

<comment><USER13> I live near Atlanta and I get the same issue around the same time. It's not reliably every night (thankfully, since I'm on almost every night) but it is at least once or twice a week, sometimes more, for 15-45 minutes. I can see in the modem logs where I'm losing my connection to them and the house phone also gets disconnected.

I'm in the same boat as you where making the phone call feels like a huge hassle. But it's interesting seeing a few other people with this same problem, maybe I should call them after all.

<comment><USER14> Seems like an E911 issue if your phone is going out almost regularly in the middle of the night. That might get their attention more than anything...

Given the timeframe, it sounds like some sort of maintenance is scheduled around that time- during "off-peak" hours.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> For those hatin on speedtest.net and wanting upload, [http://speedtest.dslreports.com/](http://speedtest.dslreports.com/) and [https://speedof.me/](https://speedof.me/) have booth been around for a while. The reason for fast.com is that it tests download speed from netflix. ISPs can't prioritize it without prioritizing netflix as well.

<comment><USER16> Couldn't an ISP prioritize burst traffic but throttle streaming after X minutes?

<comment><USER17> sounds like we need a test that last as long as a movie.

<comment><USER18> Perhaps just a (optional) "download speed" display in the corner while watching a movie..

<comment><USER19> Netflix has an unofficial test movie that shows streaming speed: [http://www.wired.com/2014/06/netflix-streaming- test/](http://www.wired.com/2014/06/netflix-streaming-test/)

<comment><USER20> Or Netflix has a global index on the streaming speed for all movies, per ISP: [https://ispspeedindex.netflix.com](https://ispspeedindex.netflix.com)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> What I'd _really_ love to see is this concept provided as a service by all of the big streaming/gaming/large-content-blob providers and aggregated into a single page.

I have absolutely no reason to believe that every well-known "speed test" app/site/utility out there isn't being gamed by my ISP. A speed test that showed me my _actual_ streaming bandwidth from Netflix, _actual_ download speed of an XX MB file from Steam, _actual_ upload bandwidth to some photo- sharing service, and _actual_ latency to XBox Live or some well-trafficked gaming service would be awesome.

<comment><USER22> _I have absolutely no reason to believe that every well-known "speed test" app/site/utility out there isn't being gamed by my ISP._

Guess who runs the nearest speedtest.net server: Comcast.

<comment><USER23> There is good reasons for this, it can help a ton in figuring out where exactly the issue is. If the speedtest server is off-net, you have no idea where the problem lies. Transit provider? Peering? End network? my wifi? Last mile?

<comment><USER24> There may be some good reasons for this, but for even the best companies, it's shady. And comcast is _far_ from one the best companies.

Instead, they should create a site that is clearly comcast branded and shows the results of each step.

<comment><USER25> They do: [http://speedtest.xfinity.com/](http://speedtest.xfinity.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Seems like this is really about training their consumers to define the quality of their internet by their reachability to the Netflix CDN nodes.. Smart move on Netflix's part.

<comment><USER27> To many, Netflix reachability is their #1 concern.

<comment><USER28> I'm a software engineer with all sorts of shit hooked up to my 100mbps (thanks Comcast for no gigabit in your worldwide headquarters city of Philadelphia) downlink (still 10mbps up because you know...) and Netflix is absolutely my #1 concern at home.

<comment><USER29> Eh, netflix maxes out content at a fraction your comcast speed. Doesn't really matter if Netflix is going 50mbps or 100mpbs. Making netflix work is important, but I'd be pretty disappointed if my ISP was giving me 20mpbs, even though Netflix would never need that much.

<comment><USER30> It matters if you've more than one Netflix stream running at the same time. It will matter even more once Netflix starts doing VR ;-)

<comment><USER31> And, having your pipe overloaded by things other than Netflix. I have two kids watching Youtube on pads and a wife watching TV in another room. With my fake Uverse (DSL) the TV uses the internet connection so, we are often streaming four different videos at the same time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> When I used to be a Netflix customer it was more the variability of my connection that was an issue and not its "speed" at a given optimal time.

Usually I could begin a stream without problems. But often while streaming (often enough for me to realize streaming was a bad experience) the bitrate dynamically dropped way down to a terrible quality in response to what I imagine were poor network conditions. Netflix no doubt sees this dynamic quality adjustment as a feature, and preferable to buffering, but I chose an HD stream and I'd rather even see an SD quality video that I could be sure would stay that quality than switching between HD and very low bitrate, fuzzy, artifacty video.

I don't blame Netflix for the quality of my connection, but streaming is just not as reliable as cable and it's not one of those Moore's Law type things where throwing more processing power or memory fixes the network issues.

<comment><USER33> Hi, I work on the streaming algorithms at Netflix.

You are correct that throughput variability matters a lot as well. The trouble is that the variability is somewhat unpredictable (at least, with our methods so far).

And you're also right that we view the "dynamic quality adjustment" as a feature! Without it, we wouldn't be able to serve both 0.5Mbps connections and 50Mbps connections seamlessly. But we don't like those sudden quality drops, either. We track how often that occurs, as well as how often rebuffers occur, and we work to eliminate both. We use large scale A/B testing to measure improvements in the field. If it's been a while since you tried it, I humbly suggest you consider trying it again. We've made a lot of progress.

If anyone is interested in working on this problem, we're currently hiring engineers on the Streaming Algorithms team with a focus on mobile. [https://jobs.netflix.com/jobs/860465](https://jobs.netflix.com/jobs/860465)

<comment><USER34> Since I have you here, can I ask a random question? My kids love Puffin Rock, and it's the only show that I would have issues streaming. It would start out fine, but a few minutes into it start buffering and would take minutes; resume for a bit, then do the same thing.

When this happened I could switch to any other Netflix show or movie and it worked perfectly fine. When the kids whined, I'd switch back to Puffin Rock and the problem would persist.

So my question is: is it possible that either some shows are encoded differently so my player had trouble with it? Or is it that specific content was being messed with by my ISP?

The players in question were Roku 2 and 3, and my ISP is Charter (business plan). I haven't tried this in a few months since it got really annoying, but can try again if it helps.

<comment><USER35> Another Netflix engineer here - have you tried with something not popular? It may be that the other shows you checked were cached via OpenConnect but Puffin Rock wasn't.

My email is my username at netflix.com. If you can send me the email address connected to your account, I can see that your problem gets to the right people. (Disclaimer: I'm not on the OC or related teams directly)

<comment><USER36> I also have a question. According to fast.com, my connection is 270 mbp/s (which jives with the official 500 mbps I'm getting). Yet, I've noticed that on chrome on mac, when I launch a new show, it often starts at a very low bitrate and then gradually switch to a higher bitrate. The problem is that this happen on every episodes.

One workaround is using the ctrl-option-shift S combination and manually set the bitrate to the highest settings but it's still a bit annoying.

<comment><USER30> Have you tried the "Adjust your Netflix playback settings" advice at [https://help.netflix.com/en/node/11559](https://help.netflix.com/en/node/11559) ? Not that I haven't seen this adaptive stream behaviour, but I find it affects my mobile devices (like iPads) far more than on a wired, desktop computer.

<comment><USER36> Hi, good point. I'll try that. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I like the idea of getting ISPs into internal conflict: the folks responsible for making sure that speed checks like speedtest.net run quickly will be fighting the folks responsible for throttling Netflix.

But, I think the throttling folks will ultimately win. In that case, I guess Netflix is laying out a good case for consumers to complain, so it's win-win.

</comment><comment><USER38> This is super awesome! It's a good speedtest that works on mobile, which I had not been able to find.

Funny thing is I found this in the source.

        <!-- TODO: add code to remove this script for prod build -->
            <!--<script>
                document.write('<script src="http://' + (location.host || 'localhost').split(':')[0] + ':8081/livereload.js?snipver=1"></' + 'script>')
            </script>-->

Not a big deal, but kind of funny.

</comment><comment><USER39> Really nice and easy to use -- the test starts way quicker than speedtest.net.

However, am I missing something, or does this only test downloading? I guess that makes sense for Netflix's use case, but I'm usually at least as interested in knowing my upload speed, because with typical asymmetric connections that can be a bigger bottleneck for video calls and content- production workloads.

<comment><USER40> Well, the nice thing about this is that they test with real-world streaming data that ISPs can't game like the do on SpeedTest.net. What's the upload equivalent of that? Flickr uploads?

<comment><USER41> I would say video chat is the biggest upload bottleneck that I care about.

<comment><USER40> Truth. Maybe we'll see Google Hangouts or Skype/Microsoft build their own version of this for upload speeds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Very interesting, and it confirmed my suspicions that my ISP throttles me (or at least, tries to).

I'm using Numericable from Paris and got 18Mbps to Netflix, 40Mbps to their comparison test. By going through an SSH tunnel (which makes a 230km detour through Roubaix), I get 39Mbps to both Netflix and control.

I am rather surprised that the bandwith loss caused by the SSH tunnel is so small.

<comment><USER43> It's also possible that the route between Numericable and Netflix is insufficiently provisioned, unlike the route from Numericable to your SSH server to Netflix, which can have more capacity.

What I mean is that's probably not an intentional throttling. Anyway, it's still a bad service. I have a similar issue sometimes with SFR...

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Oh man this is awesome. I can't wait till people start calling thier ISPs claiming they aren't getting the speeds they pay for, only for the poor agent to have to explain how peering agreements work.

<comment><USER45> Can't the ISPs just prioritize traffic to FAST to mitigate concerns?

<comment><USER46> According to Fast.com FAQ, they use the same "servers" that Netflix uses for streaming:

> To calculate this estimate, Fast.com performs a series of downloads from > Netflix servers.

So ISPs want a good Fast.com score then they should prioritize traffic to NETFLIX. A very smart move by Netflix if you ask me.

<comment><USER47> That's nice, but isn't it still a violation of net neutrality?

<comment><USER48> It's gaming the violation of net neutrality that already exists because of the ISPs.

<comment><USER49> Is not wanting to peer with somebody for free a violation of net neutrality?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I'd bet this is a move to make the ISPs that are throttling them look bad. If people start to use it to check their speeds and they are downloading Netflix content from Netflix and the ISP is throttling, it will look slower than it is and more people will likely complain.

I like it. It's suitably evil!

<comment><USER51> Why is it evil? And if the ISP is throttling Netflix, it doesn't "look slower than it is", it just accurately reports the throttled speed.

I mean sure, it's definitely to make ISPs look bad... if they're throttling Netflix connections or otherwise providing slower than advertised speeds. Which doesn't sound terribly evil to me.

<comment><USER52> Is it evil if it's illegal? [1]

[1] [https://consumercomplaints.fcc.gov/hc/en- us/articles/2042314...](https://consumercomplaints.fcc.gov/hc/en- us/articles/204231404-Open-Internet)

<comment><USER3> OP looks like he's calling Netflix's actions evil, and the post you're replying to is questioning that. I think everybody in this comment chain agrees that throttling based on domain is illegal and immoral for the ISP to do.

<comment><USER50> For the record, I meant evil in a fun way. Like a cartoon villain. Suitably meaning that it was a good equal response to what they've been dealing with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Most interesting is comparing it to the ISP speed tests:

[http://www.timewarnercable.com/en/support/speed- test.html](http://www.timewarnercable.com/en/support/speed-test.html)

[http://speedtest.charter.com/](http://speedtest.charter.com/)

[http://speedtest.xfinity.com/](http://speedtest.xfinity.com/)

Fast.com is reporting about 1/2 the speed of these for me (2 seem to use the same Ookla speed test).

<comment><USER54> I'm getting the exact opposite: Fast.com/Speedtest.net are giving me numbers more than double the ISP speed tests you linked to:

* [http://imgur.com/a/tHK2U](http://imgur.com/a/tHK2U)

<comment><USER55> It very much depends on where the local speedtest.net server is in relation to you in terms of network topology. If you're in a large city like SF or Seattle, your ISP might host a 1U box from ookla or directly peer with them at a major IX point less than 15 milliseconds away from you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> I made a command-line app for it: [https://github.com/sindresorhus/fast- cli](https://github.com/sindresorhus/fast-cli)

</comment><comment><USER57> This is good but my god what a waste of a domain name :(

<comment><USER58> You should go look at the shit that you used to be on Fast.com before Netflix bought it: [https://web.archive.org/web/20130726075933/http://www.fast.c...](https://web.archive.org/web/20130726075933/http://www.fast.com/)

<comment><USER50> It used to be owned by Windstream? What a fucking joke. They are the worst DSL provider that I've ever used.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Some observations about this:

For me, it's getting stuff from [https://*.cogeco.isp.nflxvideo.net](https://*.cogeco.isp.nflxvideo.net) \-- which indicates my ISP (Cogeco) is part of their Open Connect [1] program with an on-network netflix cache.

Other people are reporting downloads from [https://*.ix.nflxvideo.net](https://*.ix.nflxvideo.net), which appears to be the Netflix cloud infrastructure.

It downloads data from 5 URLs every time, but their sizes fluctuate, something like ~25MB, ~25MB, ~20MB, ~2.2MB, ~1.2MB.

The contents of each response appears to be the same (though truncated at a difference place), with the beginning starting with:

        5d b9 3c a9 c3 b4 20 30  b9 bc 47 06 ab 63 22 11

`file` doesn't recognize what this is.

\----

Since it's https, ISPs shouldn't be able to easily game this (eg: make this go fast, but still throttle video content).

So one potential way would be to only start throttling after 25MB is downloaded (or after a connection is open for ~2 minutes): does anyone know how Netflix actually streams? If they have separate HTTP sessions for 'chunks' of a video, then presumably this wouldn't work.

They could see if a user visits fast.com and then unthrottle for some amount of time. I'm not sure if ISPs have the infrastructure to do a complex rule like this though (anyone know?). I also think this would be relatively easy for users to notice (anytime they visit fast.com, their netflix problems disappear for a while) and there would be a pretty big backlash about something so blatant.

[1] [https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/](https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/)

</comment><comment><USER60> Odd, on a dedicated 500 mbit line I've now gotten 6 different results, ranging from 350-500. Speedtest.net indicates a stable 500+ mbit line, downloads from very fast servers always max it out at 500 as well.

Besides stabilizing it a bit, getting the upload on there would be amazing, it's certainly a lot nicer for the eye than speedtest.net.

<comment><USER40> That's because ISPs game SpeedTest.net and give you your full bandwidth for the test data. So the 350-500 is more accurate to your actual milage (at least for Netflix's peering agreements).

<comment><USER60> That would be totally valid, except I get a perfectly fine and stable 500 down from, for example, Microsoft's MSDN, depending on the size of the ISO showing this straight for a couple of minutes..

<comment><USER40> Right, this tool only tests your ISP's speed for Netflix content, which most tend to throttle. For the majority of people, Netflix is the only way that the saturate their bandwidth, so this tool is more relevant to them than to people downloading ISOs. I generally speed test by wget'ing a large ISO because those numbers are more relevant to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Interesting. Even over multiple tests, I get almost exactly 1/3rd the download bandwidth speed to NetFlix that I do testing with speedtest.net.

<comment><USER62> This tool exists exactly to highlight cases like yours.

Sounds like your ISP has over-subscribed its connection to whatever IX is serving this to you, and that they're hosting speedtest locally in their network.

<comment><USER63> More likely the speedtest sites have a much higher QOS definition, and are unthrottled, while netflix is explicitly throttled.

<comment><USER62> It is probably both.

I'm a Comcast customer. When I run speedtest & tcpdump the traffic, i'm nearly always talking to something .comcast.net, and it is just a few hops away via traceroute.

When I use fast.com, I'm talking to various ix.nflxvideo.net hosts, all at least 4 to 6 hops farther away.

The amusing thing is that I get better speed with the fast,com (140Mb/s) than with speedtest (133Mb/s).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> I also like speedof.me which tests latency, download, and upload but purely using HTML5/JS (unlike speedtest.net with it's Flash app)

<comment><USER65> There's also a command-line "client" for speedtest.net, _speedtest-cli_ [0], that just uses Python.

I use it because I don't have Flash installed anywhere. It's handy for remote or headless machines too.

[0]: [https://github.com/sivel/speedtest- cli](https://github.com/sivel/speedtest-cli)

<comment><USER23> That client is not at all reliable above about 30Mbps, and the dev just closes all issues about it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> Just for a reference point, I'm getting about 350 on Google Fiber in Kansas City.

<comment><USER67> Interesting. I'm on AT&T Gigabit (Google Fiber competitor here in Austin) and I got 660Mbit on fast.com (Windows 10 desktop directly connected via Ethernet.) A MacBook Pro laptop with Wifi (802.11ac) connected a few rooms away shows 260Mbit.

Are you wireless or wired? If wired, that seems quite low.

<comment><USER68> Thanks for reporting. I'll test when I get home, but I'm also in Austin and have Gigapower. I was afraid that it would almost embarrassingly low, but your results gave me hope. I'm curious what the Google Fiber and Grande users here get.

<comment><USER69> I'm on Grande's gigabit and am getting ~180-200 Mbps over 802.11ac a couple rooms away. Sadly I don't have an ethernet dongle for my macbook pro to test a wired connection.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> Not to sound ignorant, but what's the point? Why would Netflix go through the trouble of acquiring what I suspect to be a fairly expensive domain just to show how fast one's internet speed is?

<comment><USER71> > I find it hard to believe their motives are purely altruistic.

Absolutely selfish. Their goal is to make boatloads of money by pressuring ISPs to allow their customers to access Netflix at the speeds the customers paid for. Once customers can use their high speed internet, many will choose to be Netflix customers.

<comment><USER72> It's interesting to describe something that gets people what they pay for as selfish on the part of a third party. I mean, yes, there is something in it for netflix, but it arises from making things better for their users. I'd describe that as win-win, personally.

Now, killing performance on a service your users want so you can force an inferior product on them? That's selfish.

<comment><USER71> > It's interesting to describe something that gets people what they pay for as > selfish on the part of a third party.

It's selfish because it is done with the goal of increasing Netflix's revenue.

Now, in this case selfish doesn't mean evil. To the contrary, Netflix's success will mean happier people, more satisfied customers. Much in the same way auto manufacturers make safer cars for higher profits, or surgeons can make a comfortable living saving lives.

Netflix is simply trying to make a buck, and if some people get helped in the process, that's just collateral benefit.

<comment><USER73> >Now, in this case selfish doesn't mean evil. To the contrary, Netflix's success will mean happier people, more satisfied customers. Much in the same way auto manufacturers make safer cars for higher profits, or surgeons can make a comfortable living saving lives.

I would not call that "selfish", nor would I call it "altruistic". I would perhaps say "fair" or "just".

"Selfish" is generally a negative word. We often refer to any self-regarding behavior as selfish: both rational self-interest pursued in a manner respecting the needs of others, and the miserliness or enviousness that (often deliberately) pursues self-interest at the expense of others needs. Sometimes we state the equivocation in the form of a paradox to catch our audience's attention (the capitalist's aphorism "greed is good") and sometimes as a slur ("those greedy capitalists!"). However, I think it would be helpful if in the normal case we recognized that not all self-regarding behavior is selfish.

Note: I don't mean to nitpick, and I agree with the spirit of your post. Rather, your words were to me a catalyst for some thoughts on moral discourse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> Description would be nice for anyone on mobile who doesn't want to needlessly waste bandwidth.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, changed the title, sorry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> This is nice and great that it loads quickly with no bloat or distractions. Not sure about the domain name though, as it's not immediately obvious what the site is for.

</comment><comment><USER76> While cool, I can't believe they bought and use fast.com for something so simple. Fast.com has to be worth some coin. Anybody have any idea what that domain is worth?

<comment><USER77> It strikes me that if this is part of a strategy to get peering agreements with ISPs, they could save a lot of money in the long run.

EDIT: Added the word peering.

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> I'm pretty sure Google is about to release a speed test tool embedded directly into its SRP for speed-test-related queries.

Similarly to how they eliminated the need for third-party IP address checking tools by returning your actual IP address when you search for "what's my ip address".

<comment><USER79> They didn't eliminate the need. To get my IP from there programmatically, I'd have to parse the DOM. Or, I can "curl [https://i.ngx.cc"](https://i.ngx.cc"), and have it immediately available.

<comment><USER22> Just make sure your scripts won't fail if the site claims your IP is "$(rm -rf /)".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> The amount of data netflix will collect from this is exciting! I can only imagine the stories it will tell once hundreds of thousands of people use it. It would be fantastic to see how the agreements between ISPs and netflix affect the data transfer rates.

<comment><USER81> Surely they already have tons of speed data from millions of video streams they serve.

<comment><USER80> Absolutely and they have provided great metrics on the streaming performance of their customers.

This opens it up for folks who are not netflix customers, which hopefully gathers more data .

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER82> I have multiple WAN connections (multiple ISPs). This actually (correctly) reports the _aggregate_ download speed!

Obviously if they are "downloading multiple files," they aren't waiting for them to complete synchronously.

</comment><comment><USER83> I prefer the speed test here: [https://www.voipreview.org/speedtest](https://www.voipreview.org/speedtest) No flash or silverlight required and a lot more details

<comment><USER84> The secret here is that this is measuring speed to Netflix, which on many ISPs is throttled well beyond what other speed tests will report. I'm in the Boston area and getting 100Mbps on fast.com, but getting 250Mbps on speedtest.net. Fast.com is even encouraging you to compare their result with speedtest.net.

It's a pretty smart tactic. If you're paying for 150Mbps, but being throttled to 100Mbps on Netflix and your ISP doesn't tell you, you're not really getting what you pay for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> I feel like you could do more with this domain. Cool little tool though.

<comment><USER86> Exactly! This is a really cool domain. Would be great for a delivery/mailing service :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER87> I have absolutely terrible Netflix quality on my Samsung TV sometimes, but it shows 68MBit here. Makes me wonder whether the firmware is to blame..

<comment><USER88> It definitely is.. I have a newish Samsung smart TV and the streaming quality was always garbage. I got an Apple TV and HBO and Netflix consistently stream at their highest bitrates via the same 150mbps internet connection.

</comment></comment><comment><USER89> Thanks Xfinity. For my home service fast.com should redirect to slow.com. 5.2 Mbps (it's sold at 50 Mbps with asterisks everywhere).

<comment><USER76> When I get home I'll check my Xfinity connection (SF). When I run speedtest I get over 150Mbps down.

<comment><USER89> My office also uses Comcast/xfinity for business. Incredibly, in 2016, we had to get a $40 device that reboots the modem and router every single day once a day when the office is closed. This is the solution we were given to maintain decent speeds with their hardware. And it works.

But it's sad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER90> OK, so I get 48 on fast.com and decided to use the link to compare on speedtest.net. There I get 101 down, 112 up.

So while 48 seems very fast to me (I get 19 at work) it's a lot less than 101. Is Verizon throttling the connection or is NetFlix not giving me more the ~50? At what point is the cap on NetFlix's side and not the client connection?

<comment><USER91> That's the whole point of the test - there is something between your provider and NetFlix that is limiting the connection

<comment><USER90> OK, I get that. My point is at what point is a connection fast enough that NF won't serve you any faster? I get 101 download on speedtest but I've never downloaded an ISO file and had it download any faster than 5-6. The service on the other end has a say in how fast my downloads are. So my question is there some theoretical cap on the NF side that says anything over (arbitrary-number> is fast enough so clients are capped at that.

I'm on FIOS so I would not be surprised at all that VZ throttles the connection but on the other hand why cap it at ~50 and not at 5 or whatever? At 50 my connection is fast enough for me to watch full HD so it's not as if there turning me into a frustrated customer who decides cutting the cable is more hassle than it's worth...

<comment><USER91> It'll do more than 50 - [http://i.imgur.com/14v10xr.png](http://i.imgur.com/14v10xr.png)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER92> One thing that Fast.com doesn't say is the top speed that Netflix's servers can deliver. I have 250 Mb fiber connection, and Fast.com tops out at about 150 Mbps for me. Speedtest.net consistently shows 250-280 Mbps. But it's unclear whether the lower rate is Netflix's servers limit, or my ISP throttling them.

</comment><comment><USER93> Is it inflating the results shown on Wi-Fi?

I am on a MacBook Air Early 2014 and my current link speed is 144 Mbit/s according to Network Utility, but fast.com shows between 210 to 230 Mbps on each run.

Speedtest.net results are consistent as before at ~38 Mpbs, which is what I would expect from the routers around me.

</comment><comment><USER94> Only downlink? For me uplink is more important, and I suspect for others as well (gaming/streaming).

<comment><USER90> The amount of data you upload to NetFlix to watch a stream is negligible so really doesn't apply in this case. This site is strictly to see if your ISP is purposely slowing down your streaming specifically from NetFlix.

</comment></comment><comment><USER95> This is interesting.

Test 1: on Comcast but connected to company's VPN: 48Mb/s

Test 2: on Comcast but not on the VPN: 11Mb/s

<comment><USER96> Wonder if the formula just calculates based on the public IP that hits fast.com rather than the client to fast.com

I have yet to see a speed test I believe, I am not getting 33mb down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER97> Wow, "fast.com" is one helluva valuable piece of DNS real estate Netflix is throwing at this.

</comment><comment><USER34> Yup, and it nicely confirms that (a) my Charter connection is in fact 65 Mbps down and (b) I can't get faster internet where I live.

Oh, and 5 Mbps up is just ridiculous. That's what I get with my business plan. Back up a TB of data to the cloud? Yeah, that'll take weeks.

<comment><USER98> > Back up a TB of data to the cloud? Yeah, that'll take weeks.

I feel your pain. 12Mbps here but it seems that Crashplan tops out at 4.5Mbps anyway here in the UK so sending 2.3TB up there took over 2 months.

<comment><USER34> Ya. And at my 5 Mbps up, I'd have to throttle it myself, otherwise my internet connection here would be useless for the weeks it takes to upload.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER99> My internet speed (according to fast.com) is 0. Adblock & uBlock off on the site & fast.com uses https. Not sure why it wouldn't be working, no VPN in middle. Anyone else having issues?

edit: Speedtest.net was ~38mbps down. Is a netflix subscription nec. for this?

<comment><USER73> >Is a netflix subscription nec. for this?

Don't think so. I can reach it from a computer that has never logged into my Netflix account. Can you reach the main netflix website?

<comment><USER99> I can reach netflix.com. I can now reach fast.com. I am skeptical that the results are correct, i pay for 50mbps, typcally receive ~40ish, and fast.com says avg of 56

edit: can't reach servers again. no idea why, currently behind vpn now. No disruptions anywhere. I wonder if the site is just under heavy load and failing but not returning proper status codes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER100> The download speed is absolutely incorrect, I live in a 3rd world country and have a 2Mb connection I get max 200/kb max download rate, fast.com is showing a download speed of 1.2Mb I really wish it was true

</comment><comment><USER101> Speed is halved using fast.com (140 down) vs speedtest (287 down) and I'm currently on Paxio in Oakland [http://www.paxio.com](http://www.paxio.com)

<comment><USER102> I find it's about 10 Mbps slower on Cablevision.

</comment></comment><comment><USER103> Why doesn't netflix just try to by-pass ISPs by rolling out their own service?

Big ISPs are starting to cap data, to stop/slow-down netflix. They should just put out their own high speed service like Google.

<comment><USER104> If only it were that easy...

<comment><USER103> They have the money. Could end up being very profitable down the line.

<comment><USER105> Google is doing this with Google Fiber and it's not exactly making a ton of progress :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> Interesting looking at Chrome developer tools, lots of magic and interesting payloads.

The http header Via is interesting as it lists the AWS instance that served the request and region. i-654a87b8 (us-west-2)

</comment><comment><USER106> On AT&T U-verse in Palo Alto area. $72 p/month for 24mb now with even more data caps.

Fast.com ~23mb Speedtest.net ~38mb

Hum, I wonder which is right and which is the ISP screwing with traffic?

<comment><USER107> Speedtest is a more accurate measure of what you're actually paying for - which is a connection to the ATT network. The speedtest server is right on their network most likely.

Fast.com is a more functional test, specifically measuring how fast a connection on the ATT network in that area to the Netflix servers is. You're not paying ATT for a 24mb/s connection to every server on the entire internet because that would be impossible (how could your ISP promise you that much bandwidth across a transatlantic cable, or over a satellite link, or to a server connected via dialup). More generally, you're testing the strength of their peering and the route available for a specific purpose (watching Netflix).

They aren't measuring the same thing at all. It would be like buying a 100mb/s router, plugging it into 20mb/s internet and then complaining that your router is broken because you can't download at 100mb/s. Your router will still show your ability to contact other computers in your house as 100mb/s (analogous to speedtest), but reaching computers outside your network (analogous to fast) is limited by the speed of your connection to the next larger network.

<comment><USER106> Speedtest.net provides many different servers, most of which are not on the AT&T network. The IP is not in the AT&T space and the AS path leaves AT&Ts network.

In the end until someone can provide a dump of what is in the routers settings it is all a guessing game.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER108> Dupe of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11723157](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11723157) ?

<comment><USER109> Since that one was posted later and doesn't add much info, I think we'll treat it as a dupe of this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER110> I prefer [http://linux.die.net/man/1/nload](http://linux.die.net/man/1/nload)

</comment><comment><USER111> Well... I just found out that my connection went from 20Mb to ~120Mb recently. I have no idea when this happened and my bill hasn't changed.

</comment><comment><USER112> Not surprisingly since this is downloading Netflix content, it doesn't work when I'm connected through Private Internet Access VPN.

</comment><comment><USER113> Just tried it on our 300/300Mbit link at work, lots of people working today so it'll be heavily under use but:

\- Netflix: 240Mbit/s

\- Speedtest: 293Mbit/s

</comment><comment><USER114> Mhh, I get consistently (much) lower Mbps with Firefox than with Chrome. Is it how it's supposed to be? Is it my network maybe?

</comment><comment><USER104> How long until ISPs catch on and make sure fast.com is given a high priority?

I don't see how this will accomplish anything for Netflix.

<comment><USER115> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11723035](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11723035)

<comment><USER104> So, you're saying ISPs can't prioritize the traffic from/to fast.com while throttling Netflix.com?

<comment><USER116> Yes.

<comment><USER104> I'm not convinced that is entirely true.

<comment><USER117> How could they? It is traffic going back and forth to the Netflix servers over https. The ISP can't tell WHAT is in that traffic, only where it is going. Thus, if they throttle Netflix, they throttle fast.com.

<comment><USER118> The simplest way would be to cheat and prioritize traffic for a few minutes and then throttle. That way, any speed test would come out fine but not actual shows.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER119> Wow- this is awesome. I hated speedtest.net

<comment><USER120> Would you mind elaborating on that? What are the issues with speedtest.net?

<comment><USER121> Not OP but it's a large, hideous site with a lot of junk I don't care about. The faux-futuristic map with an arc to a pyramid? The colored odometer with a variable scale? Creating an account? Ads?

As others have mentioned, ISPs can game the speedtest.net results, whereas with fast.com users will get exactly what they want: a single number that shows how fast they get Netflix. No frills, nothing else. Some of the advanced features of speedtest.net are useful for some advanced users, but it's a weird de-facto standard that caters to the tiny minority.

<comment><USER120> Those are pretty good points. The big appeal for fast.com for me is that it measures the connection to Netflix's services and ISP's can't game it, but I still wish it gave more information than a single number.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER122> This is an awesome alternative to the other speed tests because it's very minimal and has a clutter-free UI.

</comment><comment> martin-adams Cool tool. I'd love to know the story behind how Netflix managed to use such a lucrative domain.

</comment><comment><USER123> is there a bandwidth cap? i constantly get 160Mbps but i know for sure that our office line can do way more. speedtest.net is always close to 900Mbps. maybe speedtest.net has a endpoint within the ISP backbone and netflix not? or is the peering between AWS and my ISP?

</comment><comment><USER113> Doesn't work at all well for me here in Melbourne on 4g. Netflix: 7Mbit, speedtest.net: 39Mbit

</comment><comment><USER124> Is this a way for them to optimize who they deliver faster streaming services to?

</comment><comment><USER125> 730mpbs to fast.com while only 700mbps on speedtest.net (with 853mbps up).

<comment><USER81> What kind of connection gives you 730Mbps?

<comment><USER126> Gigabit becomes quite common in Europe. I get 910

<comment><USER81> Wow. Is this a home consumer connection? What is the cost?

<comment><USER126> 40 Euro. 100mbit 9,90, 600mbit 19,90. Eastern Europe for the win ;)

<comment><USER127> Bit on the high side, I pay a fourth of that here :)

<comment><USER81> 10 euro/month for 1 gigabit?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER128> No upload speed results?

<comment><USER76> Upload does not matter when streaming video.

</comment></comment><comment><USER129> man, i'd love to see something like this for twitch streams. i feel like i have problems with twitch streams at specific times per day.

</comment><comment><USER130> On my laptop:

First test: 55mbps

Second: 35mbps

Third: 22mbps

Fourth: 22mbps

Speedtest: right at 36mbps every time.

It seems to be more stable on my cellphone.

</comment><comment><USER131> SPEED MEGATHREAD, post your speed/location/ISP below here:

44Mbps / London, uk / BT

<comment><USER98> 200Mbps / Stonehenge, UK / Virgin Media

Exactly as advertised though having the cabinet on my front garden does mean I can get about 220Mbps in the quietest periods so I"m fairly lucky.

Unfortunately, a 12Mbps throttled upload is not a great experience, especially when Virgin had said it would be at least 200/20.

</comment></comment><comment><USER132> Yawn, only checks download speed.

<comment><USER133> From a consumer standpoint, that is the more interesting metric.

For those of us who frequent HN, it is only half the picture.

<comment><USER134> Or like 9/10 the picture

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER135> It's surprising that people on HackerNews don't seem to understand the basics of how the Internet works.

<comment><USER136> No its not. Go interview developers sometime.

<comment><USER137> I have had that conversation with developers, where I literally was pointing them at the Wikipedia article and quoting bits back at them. Fun times. _[citation needed]_</comment></comment></comment>


Gfverif: fast and easy verification of finite-field arithmetic - <AUTHOR> http://gfverif.cryptojedi.org/ <comment><USER2> Link to code from Examples page: [http://gfverif.cryptojedi.org/gfverif-20151230.tar.gz](http://gfverif.cryptojedi.org/gfverif-20151230.tar.gz)</comment>


Ask HN: What music do you listen to when coding? - <AUTHOR>

and makes you get deep into the flow <comment><USER2> Previously: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1525445>

And from almost there:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=716219>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=167076>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=132026>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=61831>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=769769>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=668138>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1209378>

I kind of like classical music if it is slow paced and without singing, otherwise none is better.

<comment><USER3> Ditto on the classical music, though there are types with singing I can allow, such as Pavarotti's Nessun Dorma, Ridi Pagliacco, or any Ave Maria. Anything by the St. Olaf Choir is A-OK too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Mostly no music at all.

If I listen to music, then it's mostly classics like sonatas by Bach, Beethoven, Chopin or Mozart. And it's always music that I know very well, so that it doesn't draw away my attention. For the same reason it's mostly music with very few instruments. You can't concentrate on coding and a fully orchestrated symphony the same time. Jazz is another option. Again: Shouldn't be too complex. More like solo instrument. Keith Jarret playing piano is a good example.

Less likely other modern music. Singing I experience as distracting. Unless I don't know the language, so that I'm not tempted to follow it, Jan Garbarek playing sax together with the Hilliard Ensemble singing in Latin works great.

Though I listen to a lot of different music when I'm not coding.

</comment><comment><USER5> From <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=716262> \- one of the many times this question has come up ..

None - I can't code while music is on. Ditto conversation, and ditto doing math.

There was something in PeopleWare (I think) about an experiment done with people listening to music. Those listening to their preferred music performed about as well as those who preferred silence and got it, and about as well as those who preferred music, but had silence. The group that preferred silence but had music performed, unsurprisingly, comparatively badly.

The sting in the tail was this. The task they were given had an "Aha!" insight buried in it. Namely, the full set of transforms they'd been asked to implement turned out to be trivial, although the individual components weren't.

All the programmers who had the "Aha!" moment had silence, regardless of their preference. No one with music saw the short cut.

I've since tried to find concrete evidence to support this anecdote, either papers, or first hand accounts, but the recounting in PeopleWare remains the only reference I have.

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't know if this is true, but I read somewhere that listening to music while coding can interfere with coming up with creative solutions when you are stuck on a coding problem.

The reasoning behind this claim was that music "occupies" your right brain leaving only your left brain working on the task.

I don't know the validity of this claim as I haven't seen any academic studies backing it up.

</comment><comment><USER7> None whatsoever if I can possibly help it. When music is on I listen to music, pretty much inevitably, and to the detriment of my focus on anything else.

In noisy situations I listen to ambient music. This is, frankly, not music I listen to at any other time, but it serves its design purpose of filling the sonic space without overly engaging my attention.

</comment><comment><USER8> Usually no music at all. I work best when it's quiet and peaceful, that's why I love getting up at 6am.

When I need a bit of noise I usually hit SomaFM. They have lots of great stations for coding, I recommend Mission Control, Drone Zone or Space Station Soma.

<http://somafm.com/>

<comment><USER9> Awesome radios. Loved it, thanks for the tip

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I am a musician (singer) and i can not listen to anything without focusing on music - so I like silence when I am coding:)

</comment><comment><USER11> I love listening to Steve Reich while I'm working -- minimalist music but with sexy harmonies. I'm a musician so I can't put anything too aurally interesting on, but Reich puts me in the right place. Try it sometime. _Music for 18 Musicians_ is a good place to start.

</comment><comment><USER12> I don't really know why, but I always listen to some 90's music when I code. Third Eye Blind, Barenaked Ladies, Goo Goo Dolls, things like that.I just get in the zone when I have a good 90's playlist going on Pandora.

</comment><comment><USER13> Trance / Progressive / House music gets me into the flow.

</comment><comment><USER14> Calipsonian sung by a 80 year old. Don't know why. <http://goo.gl/P14i>

</comment><comment><USER15> Bach (usually played by Glenn Gould), Scarlatti.

</comment><comment><USER16> Ticking pomodoro clock and/or Ke$ha on repeat.

</comment><comment><USER17> Mornings nature sounds; afternoon trance.

</comment><comment><USER18> you guys should listen "Gotan Project" which is a "electronic tango" totally recommended

</comment><comment><USER19> 'animals' - pink floyd

<comment><USER20> Speaking of PF, I am enjoying the new David Gilmour & The Orb album. There's a special headphone mix that I listen to when working.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Easy money by KC

</comment><comment><USER22> Groove salad.

</comment><comment><USER23> goa-psy on di.fm

</comment><comment><USER24> sinatara</comment>


Do the Stupidest Thing that Could Possibly Work - <AUTHOR> http://globalnerdy.com/2007/06/01/do-the-stupidest-thing-that-could-possibly-work/ <comment><USER2> So, is this an argument for writing a distributed Web framework in VB 3?

Probably not. But it does suggest people should read The Black Swan, especially the parts on prediction.</comment>


XCPng: libre XenServer - <AUTHOR> https://xcp-ng.github.io/ <comment><USER2> I really hope this takes off. I even run XenServer on my workstation with GPU passthrough etc. and the changes in 7.3 will cost me two Windows 10 licenses and having to start my workstation all over.

It felt utterly hopeless but this might reignite my hope for continuing running on ~xenserver.

<comment><USER3> +1. I've always wanted to do one of the GPU passthru Linux workstation/gaming machine builds, but it seems like doing so with the official XenServer is now impossible for hobbyists.

<comment><USER4> It can be done with a bit of work using QEMU/libvirt. The Arch Linux wiki has a good guide for doing it. Not that it's a pretty solution always…

<comment><USER5> these days it works out of the box on debian stable

run virt-manager, create vm, select your graphics card, and it boots

<comment><USER6> which gpus are easier to work with in this scenario, amd or nvidia?

<comment><USER7> The two parent posters are probably talking about PCI passthrough, in which case it does not really matter. The virtual machine gets the entire GPU and runs the driver. It also needs a dedicated monitor, keyboard and mouse.

However Xenserver (and VMware) supports GPU sharing between _multiple_ virtual machines, essentially GPU virtualization. Both Nvidia and AMD have custom solutions for this. I believe this is what the ancestor comment is using on Xenserver.

There is work-in-progress support for GPU sharing in Linux KVM as well, although currently I think it's restricted to Intel. If you're interested in that, I would recommend going with AMD, since they maintain a high-quality driver in Linux itself (unlike Nvidia who only maintains a proprietary out-of- tree driver), and thus is much more likely to be supported by KVM.

<comment><USER8> > The two parent posters are probably talking about PCI passthrough, in which > case it does not really matter.

Not quite, Nvidia actually forbids the use of their consumer level cards being used this way and actively tries to deter it by detecting the use of a hypervisor in the drivers and refusing to initialize the card. There are ways to either work around or defeat this detection, either by using patched drivers that remove the check or by. Having the virtual machine hide it's presence from the guest system which can have a performance impact. AMD does not try to prevent such uses of their consumer level cards and are more likely to work out of the box.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I used and really liked ganeti[1]. I wish they'd make a release once in a while.

I love the way it works, its overall architecture. Very clean and reliable feeling. A bit like a kubernetes for VMs.

Install in your favourite distro, assign it a network bridge (eg: br0) and a lvm volume group, and done. All nodes in a cluster do replicate the configurations, and can become the master node at a moment's notice.

[1] [http://www.ganeti.org/](http://www.ganeti.org/)

<comment><USER10> [http://minimega.org/](http://minimega.org/)

<comment><USER9> Like most such tools, it isn't comparable to ganeti.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> * better backups

would be great. the backup situation on xenserver compared to vmware/hyper-v sucks. or to say it differently veeam gui is kinda strange, but it's a really good backup tool.

<comment><USER12> Have you tried xen orchestra? They are my client, and I see a lot of code around backups in github.</comment></comment>


Ask YC:  Anyone try combining a Yahoo Answers like site with wikis? - <AUTHOR>

People would use a wiki to collaboratively construct an answer for each question.  You might even have a sophisticated method for assigning credit. <comment><AUTHOR> Taking this further, can these answers be processed further to build an encyclopedia (without the explicit questions)? Would that be a good way to build an encyclopedia?

</comment><comment><USER2> Reminds me a bit of squidoo <http://www.squidoo.com/>

<comment><USER3> Reminds me a lot like mahalo

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This sounds like <http://www.ehow.com/>

</comment><comment><USER3> Reminds me a lot like wiki answers <http://wiki.answers.com/></comment>


The militarization of the Internet - <AUTHOR> http://scrawford.net/blog/the-militarization-of-the-internet/1409/ <comment><USER2> If a cyber-terrorist wants to cause havoc, he/she will find a way; the best way for them to get around this would be to move to another country where such laws are nonexistent.

And who will be controlling regulation of such back-doors? The FBI? The CIA? And who's to say who? How do we know there won't be a way for the "bad guys", not just the government, to use that hole to get data off of my computer?

What about 100 years from now? What new invasions of privacy will be next? If this is okay, will what is not okay now be fine tomorrow?

Or am I just "paranoid"?

<comment><AUTHOR> You are not paranoid.

For backdoor abuse example look for Greece government phone communication being eavesdropped by _someone_. _Someone_ used phone pbx data port intended for phone conversation listening by law enforcement.</comment></comment>