FREE Broadband ISP and Network Traffic Management Testing Tools

dogmaryxx

The Traffic Management and Shaping measures imposed by many UK broadband providers have the power to both help and hamper a customer’s connection. Though this often depends on both how an end user chooses to make use of their service and the degree to which his or her ISP enforces any limits.

Needless to say it can often be difficult to know precisely what your ISP is doing with the connection. Happily there are a couple of clever free web-based tools around to help identify what your ISP is doing behind the scenes and every now and again we like to give them a little plug.

Glasnost
http://broadband.mpi-sws.org/transparency/
Glasnost runs a simple Java test to see if your ISP is manipulating BitTorrent (P2P) file sharing traffic. There's also another tool for checking link bandwidths and potential router queueing delays in both upstream and downstream directions.

ICSI Netalyzr
http://netalyzr.icsi.berkeley.edu/
The Netalyzr analyzes various properties of your Internet connection that you should care about — including blocking of important services, HTTP caching behavior and proxy correctness, your DNS server's resilience to abuse, NAT detection, as well as latency & bandwidth measurements — and reports its findings in a detailed report.

Both of these are quite interesting to run, although Netalyzr's results will not mean much to those who aren't familiar with common network jargon. In addition some virus checkers might spot a virus file with Netalyzr's test, though there is no cause for alarm because the file is a common test used in the Anti-Virus industry.

pcombo

lol would love someone with a bt connection to post results of the ICSI Netalyzr test.

dogmaryxx

All systems go on Talk Talk Glasnost result(edited)


The BitTorrent upload (seeding) worked. Our tool was successful in uploading data using the BitTorrent protocol.
There's no indication that your ISP rate limits your BitTorrent uploads. The BitTorrent download worked. Our tool was successful in downloading data using the BitTorrent protocol.
There's no indication that your ISP rate limits your BitTorrent downloads.