Tracking Internet Service Provider Performance.
Why?
Before 2020 homeworking was a luxury of a few. Even within the IT sector the norm was to go into the office although off-shore and near-shore IT staffing were already common place it was still not the defacto to spend multiple weeks at home.
COVID-19 lockdown converted the home to main place of work, this transformed the ownership of maintaining IT services such as networking onto the employee rather the employer. Thus changing networking from being a thing of concern by the more technically savvy into a every household issue who had become reliant on their internet not just for work but for everything component of modern living. This turned home internet from a entertainment asset like your TV License into a vital commodity like electricity or running water.
As the pandemic rolled into 2023 with lockdowns over a year ago although the mood of the world still hesitant fearing another variant, life returned to normal with many chose to stay at home preferring the work/life balance with home working.
So, this year I was giving a talk on Service Level Objectives. In which I was emphasizing: monitoring what is important. It was at this time I thought:
` “Why am I not monitoring what is important at home?” `
Then it hit me… my average working week is between 45 and 50 hours and in that entire duration I’m sat on a computer connected to a VOIP call or in a messenger chat of some sort. All of this is on my single ISP. We’ve all to some extent altered our home environment to suit this need, in my case I had already upgraded my ISP from 30Mbps to 1Gbps connection but how do I know you’re getting what I’d paid for?
I started digging. What protections was there to British consumers when it comes to holding a Internet Service Provider ISP responsible?
Thankfully here in the UK Ofcom (the regulator for communications here), had already started to address this issue. They had identified the importance of this internet in a modern society way-back in 2018 and introduced a voluntary codes of practice for broadband information. This policy looks to enforce those who sign up to supply:
- More realistic speed estimates at the point of sale.
- Always providing a minimum guaranteed speed and the right to exit connected to this speed at the point of sale.
- Strengthening customers’ rights and extending the right to exit to bundled products.
- Ensuring all customers benefit from the codes, regardless of their broadband technology.
Excellent, with a bit of luck my ISP was signed upto this. After a bit of digging, I’ve found list of ISPs who have signed up. I’ve also looked into a other common ISPs and as you can see from the table below some common vendors are not currently taking part.
| Vendor | Has a Minimum Guaranteed Speed Policy? | Minimum Guaranteed Speed |
|---|---|---|
| BT | Yes | Policy Link |
| Sky Broadband | Yes | Policy Link |
| Virgin | Yes | Policy Link |
| EE | Yes | Policy Link |
| Plus Net | Yes | Policy Link |
| Talk Talk | Yes | Policy Link |
| NOW Broadband | Yes | Policy Link |
| Utility Warehouse | Yes | Policy Link |
| Zen Internet | Yes | Policy Link |
| Vodafone | No | |
| KCOM | No | |
| Three | No |
The Three Day Rule?
All those who are signed up to the ofcom code of practice effectively sign up to
Right to exit the contract without penalty where speed problems cannot be
resolved.
Although that is pretty washy as a statement, all those signed up agree that the maximum download speed given at the point of sale will be at least 50% of the advertised speed (including peak times). Thus if you buy a 100mbps connection but the line speed only 40mbps and you cannot move you whole property closer to the exchange then you can rely on protection that at the time of sign-up you got a personalised minimum speed guarantee that if you have to, you can get released from the contract.
That said, internet speeds drift rapidly so pinning the ISP on the one day when the internet blipped for a second to 20 kbps shouldn’t and doesn’t give the consumer the ability to exit the contract. As such rule of thumb most follow is a three day rule, in-that after three consecutive days below Minimum Guaranteed Speed the right to leave kicks in. You have to check first the policy of your vendor (see above).
How To Track Your ISP?
In previous blogs I’ve spoken about setting up a Kubernetes cluster in a home lab. For this solution to work you will need a cluster to run this stack on.
I’ve setup a small open sourced project to help with this, see my GitHub repository - isp-monitor. Essentially it will create a dashboard which at the time of writing is configured to my ISP however as the project evolves in the coming weeks I will look to make it highly configurable.