Thursday, July 12, 2018

Internet Speed Potentially Multiplied

So, to preface, I am the network admin at a small ISP and I've been racking my brain to figure out how something has happened. tl;dr at the end

Yesterday, we installed a new customer on our highest package at 100/10. Nothing out of the normal there. According to my tech who performed the install, the cx had a firewall behind the modem and then a "Dell device" behind that, which their computer was connected to. He didn't take any pictures or get any additional information, which I'm sorely disappointed about because that's where things got strange.

Once everything was connected, he ran several speedtests and the results were around the same every time. The picture sent to me shows a speedtest at 215/325. We get those sort of speeds at our headend and certainly not at a home or a place of business that is not connected via fiber.

I believe that the cx is maybe working remotely. Is it at all possible that they are sharing the internet connection of some corporate office or has this particular person found the holy grail of internet connectivity? This is the first time I've encountered this and it has me positively stumped. I've been trying to research this myself to avoid invading the customer's privacy. I will if it comes to it as it poses a potential tax on the overall plant, but that's last resort type stuff.

I've tried researching and setting up my own VPN connected to our office network which did not provide similar results. I also looked into proxy servers, but I don't think that's what this is. The only thing I found remotely close is "WAN Acceleration/Optimization," and since Dell acquired Sonicwall and some have the WAN Acceleration option, I thought this a potential of what it is, but I'm not 100% that fits the bill either. If someone knows anything that fits the description of this magical mystery box, please do inform me. Thanks!

TL;DR: Customer hooked up on 100/10 internet, gets 200/300 instead. How?



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