DSLReports is a North American-oriented broadband information and review site based in New York City. The site's main focus is on internet, phone, cable TV,

fiber optics An optical fiber, or optical fibre in Commonwealth English, is a flexible, transparent fiber made by drawing glass (silica) or plastic to a diameter slightly thicker than that of a human hair. Optical fibers are used most often as a means to ...

, and

wireless Wireless communication (or just wireless, when the context allows) is the transfer of information between two or more points without the use of an electrical conductor, optical fiber or other continuous guided medium for the transfer. The most ...

services in the United States and Canada, as well as other countries (United Kingdom and Australia). DSLReports was created by Justin Beech in June 1999. According to Alexa's page ranking system and the

WHOIS WHOIS (pronounced as the phrase "who is") is a query and response protocol that is widely used for querying databases that store the registered users or assignees of an Internet resource, such as a domain name, an IP address block or an autonomou ...

, dslreports.com's domain URL was registered on May 28, 1999.

History

"Broadband Reports"

In the 2000s, DSLReports was concurrently branded as "BroadbandReports.com," a domain that now redirects to dslreports.com.

2011 SQL Injection attack

Over a four-hour period on April 27, 2011, an automated

SQL Injection In computing, SQL injection is a code injection technique used to attack data-driven applications, in which malicious SQL statements are inserted into an entry field for execution (e.g. to dump the database contents to the attacker). SQL inj ...

attack occurred on the DSLReports website. The attack was able to extract 8% of the site's username/password pairs, which amounted to approximately 8,000 of the 9,000 active accounts and 90,000 old or inactive accounts created during the site's 10-year history. Once the intrusion was detected, stopped and the extent of the compromised accounts had been assessed, passwords for those accounts were automatically reset.

Content

DSLReports rates and reviews cable, DSL and fiber optic internet services from providers all over North America. The site also runs support and discussion forums and offers online tools for testing internet connection.

Reviews

DSLReports allows its users to submit reviews of their

Internet service provider An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise private ...

(ISP), Web hosting service, digital phone service (VOIP), and more. Users may also read reviews written by others. Many large ISPs have over a thousand reviews on the site. Reviews may be filtered for the user's location and/or connectivity preference.

News

The site is a source of internet related news and opinion, and occasionally breaks stories about broadband internet service providers, such as

Time Warner Cable Time Warner Cable, Inc. (TWC) was an American cable television company. Before it was acquired by Charter Communications on May 18, 2016, it was ranked the second largest cable company in the United States by revenue behind only Comcast, operat ...

's 2008 decision to test consumption-based billing with subscribers. That same year, when

Charter Communications Charter Communications, Inc., is an American telecommunications and mass media company with services branded as Spectrum. With over 32 million customers in 41 states, it is the second-largest cable operator in the United States by subscribers, ...

began sending letters to high-speed internet customers regarding a new website tracking policy, reports of the letters first appeared on DSLReports. DSLReport's editors post Internet-related news and opinion items on the site's front page throughout the day. Common topics of news items and features include

technologies,

peer-to-peer Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads between peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the network. They are said to form a peer-to-peer n ...

file sharing, upgrades and new offerings from ISPs, legal issues, regulatory issues, and security issues. However, since July 2, 2018, the site has not published new articles, as its main editor, Karl Bode, was laid off due to funding. However, compilations of links to articles on other sites are published every weekday.

Tools

DSLReports is reported to have the most comprehensive package of internet and connection testing tools available.

Speed tests

The DSLReports speed test claims to be the best speed test and the first popular speed test. The speed test uses HTML5.

Ping tests

DSLReports does have a ping and jitter test.

Other tests and tools

Other tools include stream tests, line monitoring, tweak testing, packet loss testing, and many other tools. Some of these services are provided free of charge, but others require the user to purchase "tool points", which are approximately $1.

Community

DSLReports operates over 200 forums, many of which focus on Internet and computer-related topics. Other forums are dedicated to general conversation, political discussions, do-it-yourself projects or regional discussions. There are over a 1.8 million total registered users on the DSLReports forums. A discussion forum is automatically created for every news and opinion article posted on the front page, which allows members to discuss the article in question. Although membership is free, the forum community allows for anonymous posting so the information or source in nonymousposts may be questionable as compared to posts made by actual frequent members of the site. There are also well hidden private invitation and very controversial forums such as the "meatlocker" which can be seen by adding the /forums/meatlocker suffix to he website address. It is said this private area is for nude and pornographic material submitted by the moderators and special guests. Robb Topolski, a software tester whose findings and subsequent political activities have contributed to the movement for

net neutrality Network neutrality, often referred to as net neutrality, is the principle that Internet service providers (ISPs) must treat all Internet communications equally, offering users and online content providers consistent rates irrespective of co ...

has contributed to the site.

Influence

DSLReports has been written about or had their reports featured in ''

CNN CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by ...

'', ''

USA Today ''USA Today'' (stylized in all uppercase) is an American daily middle-market newspaper and news broadcasting company. Founded by Al Neuharth on September 15, 1982, the newspaper operates from Gannett's corporate headquarters in Tysons, Virgini ...

'', ''

Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also re ...

'', ''

NBC News NBC News is the news division of the American broadcast television network NBC. The division operates under NBCUniversal Television and Streaming, a division of NBCUniversal, which is, in turn, a subsidiary of Comcast. The news division's var ...

'', ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...

'', ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' and ''

Ars Technica ''Ars Technica'' is a website covering news and opinions in technology, science, politics, and society, created by Ken Fisher and Jon Stokes in 1998. It publishes news, reviews, and guides on issues such as computer hardware and software, sci ...

'', among others. The site has been described by ''The Washington Post'' as a "comprehensive reference" for internet services. Discussion topics on the DSLReports frequently generate thousands of comments. The ''

Associated Press The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. newspa ...

'' reported that over 5,000 messages were posted to forum discussing a potential data cap imposed upon Comcast Corp. customers in 2003. ''CNN'' has rated DSLReports as one of the best free online services.

References

External links

*{{Official website, name=DSLReports official website American review websites Internet forums Technology websites Consumer guides Recommender systems Companies based in New York City Internet properties established in 1999 1999 establishments in New York (state)