It's a well known fact that anecdotal evidence from broadband speed testers often don't give you the full picture of an ISPs network performance. To that end Samknows has come up with a radical new idea, which involves volunteer consumers installing kit in their homes to help more accurately monitor how providers perform:


To that end Sam has launched the 'Performance Monitoring Network', which will deploy small hardware-based monitoring units to volunteers all around the country. The units, which are based off a software modified Linksys WRT54GL router, will perform a series of tests at regular intervals during the day, every day of the year.

The tests themselves go far beyond the usual speed tests, covering everything from latency to web page failure rates:

• Latency (ICMP based)


• Packet loss (ICMP based)


• DNS query resolution time


• DNS query failure rate


• Web page loading time


• Web page failure rate


• Web based download speed test (HTTP)


• Web based upload speed test (HTTP)


• Non web based download speed test


• Non web based upload speed test

The results of these tests are fed up to a reporting engine and combined with the results of others on the same ISP to form a national view of how that ISP is performing, which with enough testers could eventually be expanded to display regional results.

Presently the service, which has been running since February this year, has managed to install units in the homes of 50 volunteers. Samknows now hope to expand this with a further 200 and those interested can signup here.

However, there are a number of important requirements that people should be mindful of before agreeing to help. These include having a stable broadband connection (not frequently disconnecting), using a router to connect and not being a heavy downloader (+30GB). In addition the units’ tests will download approximately 2GB per month and upload around 500MB, which puts lite users out of the equation.

We welcome Sam's efforts to provide more independent results for seeing the true performance of UK ISPs, which could be of great benefit to all consumers. Further details and requirements can be found in Sam's FAQ, along with some initial results.