Contact

BROADBAND & FIBER · CONTINUOUS SERVICE VALIDATION

Your speed test is fine. Your customers still say the Internet is slow.

Continuously validate what subscribers can actually reach and use across fiber, DOCSIS and DSL — not just how much bandwidth is available.

Add the real customer's perspective to your broadband monitoring.

See Broadband validation in actionExplore Degust
Degust dashboard for continuous network and service validation

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

A good speed test can still hide a bad broadband experience.

Bandwidth is only one part of the service outcome. Latency, packet loss, DNS behaviour, routing changes and short interruptions can affect what customers actually experience. When the same degradation appears across many comparable locations, it stops being an individual complaint and becomes operationally relevant.

6%
affected

437 of 8,000 validation locations

≈ 5.5%

CROWDSOURCING VS. CONTROLLED PROBING

Don't trust random measurements when you need controlled answers.

Crowdsourcing may give you more measurement points at lower cost. But you cannot control what is measured, when it is measured, where it is measured — or whether the measurements follow the conditions you actually need.

CROWDSOURCING

Who?Whoever happens to participate
When?Whenever users decide to measure
Where?Wherever measurements happen to occur
What?What the platform or user chooses to measure
Context?Often incomplete or changing
Repeatability?Limited control over reproducing the same conditions

CONTROLLED DEGUST PROBING

Who?Exactly the Explorers you select
When?Continuously, scheduled or immediately on demand
Where?Customer-side, selected regions, POPs or other defined locations
What?Exactly the services and conditions you want to validate
Context?Known technology, CPE, firmware, tariff, route, carrier and customer-defined metadata
Repeatability?Run the same validation again on the same or a comparison group

When an incident happens, you don't want to wait for the right measurements. You may want to compare the affected sites with good cases:

e.g. "run validation on 50% of all DOCSIS Explorers using FRITZ!Box firmware X.YY in Northern Germany — and compare the results with 200 locations using other Fritz!Box firmware or CPE brand in the same region." or more naturally: "what happened with this group of sites during the 20 minutes right before the incident came up?"

WHY SPEED ALONE IS NOT ENOUGH

Broadband quality is more than bandwidth.

Continuous validation combines service reachability, responsiveness and supporting network evidence to understand why customers can still experience poor service despite sufficient throughput.
ResponsivenessLatency affects how quickly the infrastructure or services react even when bandwidth seems to be sufficient. This is often noted as round trip time (RTT) but is never sufficiently measured in PING times.
Packet lossLoss and retransmissions can degrade interactive services, video and browsing without necessarily causing a failed speed test.
DNSName resolution problems can make services unreachable even when the underlying IP connectivity still works.
RoutingUnexpected or inefficient network paths can increase latency and affect individual services or regions.
Micro-outagesShort interruptions can be highly noticeable to customers while remaining difficult to reconstruct after the fact.

Related insights

CONTEXT CHANGES THE RESULT

The same measurement can mean something different on fiber, DOCSIS or DSL.

Degust qualifies validation results using access technology, tariff, CPE, location and customer-defined expectations.
Responsiveness22 ms RTT – for DOCSIS, this can be within the configured expectation – for Fiber, the same result can be outside the configured expectation Example thresholds are customer-defined. They are not universal quality limits.
Throughput120 Mbit/s – in a 150 Mbit/s tariff this is 80% of subscribed bandwidth – in a 1 Gbit/s tariff this is only 12% of subscribed bandwidth
QualificationSame measurement. Different context. Different qualification. Degust qualifies validation results according to technology, tariff, environment and customer-defined expectations.
Quality of OutcomeFor services such as web, video and gaming, Degust can also use Quality of Outcome (QoO) to evaluate whether measured network conditions support the expected service outcome.

Related insights

FROM CUSTOMER SIGNAL TO INVESTIGATION

Turn broadband complaints into evidence.

Degust continuously validates services, qualifies each result in context and compares affected locations to show where investigation should start.
01

VALIDATE

Continuously observe network and service outcomes from distributed broadband locations.

02

QUALIFY

Evaluate results using technology, tariff, CPE, location and customer-defined expectations.

03

COMPARE

Automatically compare affected locations with similar locations that remain normal.

04

INVESTIGATE

Use common characteristics, DNS, routing and other supporting evidence to focus the investigation.

BROADBAND VALIDATION

See what conventional monitoring can miss.

Use continuous validation to complement existing broadband monitoring with the customer's actual service perspective.

Fiber

Validate responsiveness, service reachability and application outcomes in low-latency fiber environments.

Explore Fiber validation

DOCSIS

Qualify customer experience using access technology, CPE, firmware, tariff and regional context.

Explore DOCSIS validation

DSL

Validate service quality across distributed DSL locations and compare affected groups with similar locations that remain normal.

Explore DSL validation

MEASURE WHERE IT MATTERS

Validate the service from the customer's side — and from inside your network.

Distributed Explorers let you validate services from different points in the delivery chain and compare what customers experience with what is visible inside the network.

Behind the CPE

Validate whether services actually work from a real customer-side location — including situations where DNS or connectivity beyond the CPE is impaired.

Friendly customer

Continuously validate real-world service experience from representative subscriber locations using physical Explorers.

POP / Network location

Add validation points inside the network to help distinguish customer access issues from problems further upstream or outside the provider network. You will detect the network segments or peers to investigate.

REAL-WORLD EXAMPLE

When customers say “the Internet feels slow,” follow the evidence.

A conventional speed test can look healthy while latency, DNS or routing conditions still degrade individual services.
Expected pathCustomerProvider NetworkBroadband NetworkService
Observed pathCustomerProvider NetworkNetwork deviationIntermediate NetworkService

Finding: the network path changed while the speed test remained healthy.

Continuous validation combines service results with supporting network evidence so operators can distinguish bandwidth problems from latency, DNS, routing or short connectivity issues.

REAL PRODUCT

See broadband experience from distributed locations.

Degust brings validation results, affected locations, context and supporting network evidence together in one operational view.
Degust analysis showing service degradation, affected targets, AI-assisted analysis and network route comparison.
01Distributed validation See service results across real broadband locations.
02Context Qualify results using technology, tariff, CPE and other metadata.
03Investigation Compare affected and unaffected groups and examine supporting network evidence.

BROADBAND OPERATOR QUESTIONS

Questions broadband operators need to answer.

Continuous broadband validation helps answer operational questions that bandwidth tests and infrastructure monitoring alone cannot resolve.

Why can Internet feel slow even when a speed test is good?

Available bandwidth is only one part of broadband service quality. Latency, packet loss, DNS behaviour, routing changes and short interruptions can degrade the customer experience while a conventional speed test still reports sufficient throughput.

How can an ISP detect intermittent connectivity and micro-outages?

Frequent validation from distributed customer-side endpoints can reveal short periods of degraded reachability, latency or service availability that may disappear before conventional incident investigation begins.

How can DNS problems affect customer experience even when broadband connectivity is otherwise available?

Customers can lose access to services when DNS resolution is unavailable, incomplete or inconsistent with available connectivity. Validating DNS together with direct network reachability helps distinguish name-resolution problems from broader connectivity problems.

Why should broadband performance be evaluated differently for fiber, DOCSIS and DSL?

The same measurement can indicate different service quality depending on the access technology. Degust qualifies validation results against technology-specific and customer-defined expectations rather than applying the same threshold to every connection.

How should an ISP validate broadband performance against customer tariffs?

Measured throughput needs to be evaluated in relation to subscribed bandwidth. The same measured rate can be acceptable for one tariff and clearly insufficient for another.

Why is network context important when evaluating broadband latency?

Latency has little meaning without knowing the environment in which it was measured. Access technology, location, route, CPE and other metadata provide the context needed to determine whether observed responsiveness is expected. The context also helps to hint where you want to start troubleshooting.

How can an ISP determine whether a broadband problem affects one customer or part of the network?

Validation results from many locations can be grouped and compared using context such as region, access technology, CPE, firmware, POP, carrier or route. Shared characteristics among affected locations help identify where investigation should start.

What is Quality of Outcome for broadband services?

Quality of Outcome evaluates whether measured technical conditions support the intended service outcome. For web, video and gaming, it shifts attention from individual metrics toward whether the service can deliver the expected result.

How can a regional ISP start continuous broadband validation without deploying thousands of measurement points?

A regional ISP can begin with a smaller number of strategically distributed validation locations and expand coverage as operational requirements grow.

Where should broadband service validation probes be placed?

Validation points can be placed behind the CPE at customer-side locations, with representative friendly customers or at network locations such as a POP. Using different positions provides complementary perspectives on whether a degradation is visible at the customer edge, inside the provider network or further upstream.

How can an ISP determine whether a broadband problem is inside or outside its own network?

Validation from distributed locations can be combined with reachability and network-path evidence to determine how far connectivity remains healthy. Comparing customer-side results with validation from network locations and unaffected groups helps narrow the investigation to the access network, provider network, upstream connectivity or external service.

Why is controlled probing different from crowdsourced network measurement?

Crowdsourced measurements can provide broad visibility, but the operator has limited control over who measures, when measurements occur and under which conditions they are performed. Controlled probing uses persistent, known measurement points so validation can be scheduled, repeated and targeted using relevant context and defined comparison groups.

How can an ISP run targeted validation during a network incident?

Persistent Explorers allow an operator to select a specific validation population using criteria such as region, access technology, CPE, firmware or other metadata. The same validation can then be run on the affected group and on a deliberately selected comparison group to identify relevant differences.

See what your broadband customers actually experience.

Let us show you what continuous validation can reveal across fiber, DOCSIS and DSL.
See Broadband validation in actionTalk to us