Speed and responsiveness are critical elements when identifying and resolving customer-impacting network performance issues. Unfortunately, it hasn’t always been easy for internet service providers (ISPs) and mobile network operators to connect internal monitoring system flags to individual customer problem reports. Even once that connection is made, most providers lack a simple way to proactively respond to known performance issues via customer care.

Fortunately, real-time insights into network performance can help providers proactively identify degradation, effectively communicate with customers via traditional customer care flows and social media, and strategically deploy engineers to the most deeply affected areas.

In the Ookla® webinar on October 8, we’ll share three real-world use cases where ISPs and mobile operators are using real-time feeds of Speedtest® data to improve their network operations centers (NOC) and customer care responses. Read on for three examples of how the world’s leading network providers are approaching real-time performance issues.

1. Monitor network performance in real-time to proactively identify customer issues

Data collected via Speedtest Intelligence™, Speedtest Custom™ or a Speedtest SDK™ can be ingested via real-time feeds. These feeds can either connect to Amazon Web Services solutions such as Simple Queue Services (SQS) or to a webhook API. This allows for tight integration of real-time network performance information directly into critical provider services, including customer care.

2. Create NOC dashboards to identify regions and specific locations experiencing performance degradation

Often, consumers report performance issues before internal monitoring tools can detect a trend. Speedtest data can be pulled from real-time feeds to identify individual outliers or arbitrary regions (e.g., a postal code, state or territory) for further investigation. This data can be correlated with network probe data in real-time to provide deeper insights into issues impacting regional performance.

3. Integrate Speedtest data into customer care workflows to help troubleshoot connection issues in real-time

Customer speed tests are already an important component of most customer care workflows — whether taken via a network provider’s own system, Speedtest applications or an operator’s Speedtest SDK instance. While simply identifying whether an internet connection performs as provisioned is a critical first step in troubleshooting customer network issues, additional information is often necessary to truly understand the root cause of an issue. Speedtest real-time feeds deliver this information directly to customer care systems, helping teams understand how factors like connection type, technology, signal level and Wi-Fi band frequency impact an end user’s individual experience.

The webinar on Thursday, October 8 at 9 a.m. Pacific (12 p.m. Eastern) will show these solutions in action. Don’t miss it. A recording will be provided for registrants who can’t tune in to the live presentation. Register now.

Our mission at Ookla® is to make the internet better, faster and more accessible for everyone. To that end, we continuously look for ways to help internet service providers and mobile network operators diagnose customer issues and make network improvements. Today, we’re excited to announce a new way for network providers to integrate Speedtest® directly into your websites and web-based customer care solutions. The Speedtest Web SDK™ helps you understand how network performance and quality of service impact the consumer experience, so you can provide better, more informed customer care.

The Speedtest brand is already trusted by hundreds of millions of consumers worldwide as a source for accurate, unbiased network testing. With the Speedtest Web SDK, network operators can now integrate this same robust, accurate testing experience into their web solutions, with complete control over the user interface.

Built on Speedtest’s industry-standard testing engine and methodology

Built in Javascript, this software development kit allows you to install Speedtest as the testing solution on your website. You can build the user interface to your exact specifications and configure individual test stages including download, upload and ping.

With the ability to test against your own servers, you can diagnose and troubleshoot individual customer problems, down to the last mile of a network connection. Optionally, the Speedtest Server Network™ can be accessed for testing your customers’ network performance.

Complete network diagnostics, with flexible data and reporting options

The Speedtest Web SDK provides results for download speed, upload speed and latency (ping and jitter). Data is available directly inside your application at the time of the test, ready to drive dynamic content and actionable insights to customers. The data can be delivered to your data warehouse either as a CSV extract or via a real-time JSON feed, which may be integrated into a customer experience management or CRM platform for customer care use.

The Ookla team offers support throughout the SDK implementation process, providing onboarding and assistance with test server implementation. Licensing the Speedtest SDK includes ongoing maintenance updates and technical support in addition to technical documentation, test methodology documentation and FAQs.

How providers use the Speedtest Web SDK

With the Speedtest SDK, you can collect rich data that can be used to help:

• Predict and prevent customer churn
• Plan and validate network improvements
• Diagnose and troubleshoot individual customer problems
• Prevent expensive service truck rolls
• Ensure regulatory compliance

Whether improving an individual consumer’s call with customer care or analyzing trends in network performance, you can use Speedtest data to resolve issues impacting customer experience and save money on field support costs.

The Speedtest Web SDK makes it easy for network providers to offer a world-class network testing experience in your own solutions, backed by the Speedtest brand that consumers know and trust. Interested in other ways to provide Speedtest to your customers? We will be launching the Speedtest Mobile SDK™ later in 2020 so clients can integrate Speedtest into their mobile applications.

To learn more, inquire about the SDK today.

Ookla® has acquired SpatialBuzz, an innovative provider of enterprise telecommunications solutions that empower operators with early detection capabilities for network issues combined with real-time opportunities to directly engage with customers and ensure their satisfaction.

SpatialBuzz and Ookla share the same core goal of improving the internet experience for all people. Together, we will explore new ways to help increase consumer transparency, improve the performance and quality of networks and ensure that our enterprise clients benefit even more from Ookla solutions.

Ookla will continue to support the full portfolio of SpatialBuzz solutions. We are thrilled to welcome the SpatialBuzz team to Ookla and look forward to a shared mission moving forward.

At Ookla’s core, we are a team of passionate technology enthusiasts who constantly push to improve the speed of the internet across the globe. For thirteen years, Speedtest.net has provided the leading tools for people around the world to measure the speed and latency of their internet connections. From our Adobe Flash roots to our modern HTML5 and native applications, we have constantly focused on providing a high fidelity and rich experience for all internet users.

We have seen and have connected with many others who have the same goal — teams who have built brilliant ideas that leverage internet performance metrics to drive speed and reliability advancements across global networks.

Ookla’s goal is to support these teams by providing the best benchmarking toolsets to drive internet performance improvements across the world. Speedtest CLI is the next step in providing developers and engineers low level access to programmatically measure internet performance.

You can now run a Speedtest from your command line

We are proud to introduce our latest (and most visually minimal) application, Speedtest CLI. Speedtest CLI is a major departure from our existing applications — it is entirely text driven and does not have a traditional user interface. However, this minimalist interface is incredibly powerful — it provides the core of our Speedtest engines to software developers across the world.

This release marks the ability for any non-commercial individual to leverage over a decade of optimization and experience of network benchmarking within their own applications. Not only does Speedtest CLI provide best in class measurement techniques, but it also leverages our highly optimized C++ engine, custom Layer 7 protocols and the largest internet performance server network in the world to squeeze every bit per second out of a connection — even on embedded hardware. This is the same engine that powers our other native applications, and it is much more performant than existing solutions that rely on HTTP/S and traditional file transfer libraries.

For commercial entities, we offer Speedtest Powered^TM. Speedtest Powered further improves upon Speedtest CLI by providing deep network level customization, additional architectures, custom toolchain builds and enterprise support.

How you can use Speedtest CLI

We provide a number of different methods of working and communicating with Speedtest CLI. There is a basic user interface which provides the current stage and progress of the test for interactive use. However, the real power lies in the other output formats. We provide output in character delimited formats (CSV/TSV) and JSONL with a high sample rate — these can be consumed via the standard input of other applications to create live time progress meters and dynamic user interfaces.

Speedtest CLI can run on any platform

Speedtest is renowned for the ability to run on any platform, and Speedtest CLI is no exception. At launch, we will support Windows, MacOS, Linux and FreeBSD operating systems with statically compiled binaries. We are also excited to see what people will build within the IoT space on embedded devices — as a result, not only will we support the traditional i386 and AMD64 architectures, but we will also provide optimized builds for the ARM32 and ARM64 architectures on Linux.

Use cases for Speedtest CLI

One example of how Speedtest CLI can be used is a historical network monitoring tool. In a previous post, How I Maximized The Speed Of My Non-gigabit Internet Connection, Brennen Smith showcased an open source application which has tracked the historical performance of his internet connection with an internal build of Speedtest CLI. Now that this tool has been running for over a year, we can see that there have been multiple improvements on the ISP’s network. We can see that his upstream provider improved latency on November 2nd, and that there were multiple improvements on upload bandwidth since November 2018. Despite these improvements, one can also observe that there was degradation of the network from March 7th – 9th.

These are critical key performance indicators to track; with Speedtest CLI, anyone can build world-class applications to monitor and track network performance around the globe.

Tell us what you’re building with Speedtest CLI

The team at Ookla is incredibly excited to see what the community builds around Speedtest CLI. Please share your achievements and any tools you build with Speedtest CLI by tagging us on GitHub, Facebook or Twitter. We’re looking forward to seeing how you drive innovation and improvements to create a better internet for everyone across the world.

For more information about Speedtest CLI and documentation, please visit the Speedtest CLI page.

Ookla has acquired Mosaik, a pioneer in wireless network intelligence and mapping solutions. The combination of Ookla and Mosaik opens up exciting new data and visualization capabilities that enhance the product offerings to enterprise clients of both organizations and further strengthens Ookla’s position as the global leader in both fixed and mobile network analysis.

Ookla and Mosaik are highly complementary and share a commitment to providing the best network availability and performance insights to consumers and enterprises that rely on those networks to succeed.

Both teams will continue to focus on their existing offerings as they work together to provide vital industry research tools. In the near future, look forward to integrations between Ookla and Mosaik that advance market knowledge in an increasingly connected world. We’re excited to welcome Mosaik to the Ookla family.

Ookla has acquired Ekahau, the market leader in enterprise Wi-Fi design, optimization and troubleshooting. Founded in 2000, Ekahau is universally trusted by IT professionals and Wi-Fi industry experts as the leading software and hardware technology for deploying the world’s highest performance and most robust Wi-Fi networks.

Whether a corporate office, hotel, hospital or university – if the Wi-Fi works well, it has likely been built using Ekahau’s Wi-Fi design solutions. Ekahau Site Survey is the ideal solution for designing and deploying Wi-Fi networks, while the Ekahau Sidekick is an all-in-one professional measurement device for fast and accurate Wi-Fi site surveys and spectrum analysis.

As part of Ookla, Ekahau will continue to operate as they always have and will enhance their products by leveraging the Speedtest platform. Ookla will also benefit from the expertise and technology that Ekahau brings to the measurement and optimization of Wi-Fi networks. We’re thrilled to welcome Ekahau to the Ookla family.

Ookla has partnered with FES, a leading provider of innovative software and services for the telecom industry, to power the FESIQ Virtual Benchmarking (VBM) software suite. Effective immediately, Ookla enterprise customers may leverage the FESIQ VBM analytics platform to view measured coverage in an unparalleled level of detail, including indoor and outdoor identification, all over the world.

This in-depth view into network coverage, performance and population density is a game changer for operators and infrastructure providers seeking to deliver dramatic improvements in network efficiency and performance, while simultaneously managing those costs. By rapidly assessing all networks and technologies down to the individual building level, FESIQ VBM cuts out the traditional expense and intense effort of measuring and mapping networks through methods like drive testing. Furthermore, a comprehensive view of competitive network coverage more fully informs capital and marketing spend.

FES assists a global clientele with the planning, implementation, optimization, and regulatory compliance of wireless networks. FES is a solutions pioneer in network design and performance, including live special event monitoring and rapid VoLTE improvement. The FESIQ software suite provides these insights via a blend of capacity and performance forecasting, crowdsourced measurement analytics, and network performance assurance functionality. Since inception, FESIQ has been used to plan and optimize tens of thousands of small cell, macro, and 5G cell sites.

To learn more or inquire about the benefits of FESIQ VBM powered by Ookla, visit Ookla.com/speedtest-intelligence.