The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and SamKnows of the UK have partnered to measure broadband performance.
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The SamKnows Whitebox is an industry-approved measuring device, designed to measure performance of your broadband connection. It has been developed to enable you to accurately measure the performance of your ISP.
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If you are interested, go to
https://www.measuringbroadbandameric...-requirements/, read through the information and decide if you'd like to volunteer to participate.
I have and I received the "SamKnows WhiteBox" (it's actually black but who's counting) and installed it. It's a custom router that connects between your ADSL or cable router with a provided Ethernet cable (you plug your existing cables into the WhiteBox and it spends a minute or two self configuring when you fire it up. No fiddling around with addresses, no software installation, it just works.
Worked just fine, blink, blink, blink, steady LEDs, good to go.
The WhiteBox is shipped (from the UK) to you at no charge, free to a good home as it were. It does not interfere with your use of the Internet, it just gathers statistics (it does not monitor your traffic) and runs tests when the line is not active.
I think it's a good thing to do, doesn't cost anything, doesn't load you system with anything, what the heck, help out both the FCC and your ISP (mine happens to be HughesNet satellite service).
