The dreaded Buffering Pause can arrive at the worst possible moments of a Netflix binge, and figuring out why it happened can be next to impossible. So Netflix has decided to help out a little bit, with a site called Fast.com.
You don’t have to be a Netflix user to use Fast, but it’s a pretty useful tool for testing your Netflix connection, specifically. It pings Netflix’s servers to test your speed, and offers the result in a big, pretty webpage perfect for screenshotting. It’ll even invite you to compare Netflix’s results against an overall speed test. But why, you might be wondering, is Netflix offering speed tests in the first place?
The answer lies in the site’s FAQ. Just click on the blue question mark, and at the bottom, there’s this nugget:
If results from fast.com and other speed tests often show less speed than you have paid for, you can ask your ISP about the results.
Yep, Netflix bought a .com URL and set up a speed test entirely to enable people to gripe at their ISPs. We can’t all be the guy who automated his complaining, but this is just the latest salvo in a long, messy war between Netflix and the internet service providers who complain Netflix is freeloading. It’s a relationship so testy, Comcast has claimed Netflix sabotaged its own service just to make them miserable and Verizon sent Netflix a cease-and-desist letter so it would stop telling customers to blame Verizon for a slow connection.
In other words, Fast.com is both a quick, useful tool, and a case of a large corporation being passive-aggressive. This, friends, is what the internet was built for.
(via Fast.com)