Added support for targeting probes with state level accuracy

We have added optional input StateCode parameter to those methods:

StartDIGTestByCountry
StartHttpGetTestByCountry
StartPageLoadTestByCountry
StartTracertTestByCountry
StartPingTestByCountry

Currently only probes located in the USA can be targeted on state level. The API response will also contain StateCode (e.g. VA) and also State (e.g. Virginia) if you request CountryCode=US.

Added new limits on the number of probes you can request test from To avoid abuse we have added limits to how many probes you can request results at the same time in 1 API call. This is controlled by the probeLimit parameter which is required.

Here are the maximum values allowed for different tests.

PING – 100
DIG – 100
TRACEROUTE – 100
PAGELOAD – 20
HTTPGET – 20

If you require those limits to be lifted, please contact us.

Added web reputation services for HTTP tests

To avoid abuse and protect the probes from accessing risky content, we have added white and black lists that will be checked for all HTTP tests (e.g. HTTP GET or Page load). Following errors can happen>

StatusCode: 221
StatusDescription: Destination blocked Message: “This URL destination has been marked as risky by our web classification engine. We are unable to test this URL. ”

StatusCode: 222
StatusDescription: Destination not classified Message: “This URL destination has not been classified by our web classification engine. We are unable to test this URL at this time. Please contact support to whitelist this URL”

We have deployed few new improvements to the API.

Changes to default timeout and commandTimeout

We have changed default timeout and commandTimeout parameters to maximize the number of returned results and minimize the timeouts on probes (of course you can set any time out as you want by specifying those parameters)

Ping
timeout 8000
commandtimeout = 1000

DIG
timeout = 4000
commandtimeout = 1000

Traceroute
timeout 52000
commandtimout 1000

HTTP GET
timeout 8000
commandtimeout = timeout – 3000

Pageload
timeout 45000
commandtimeout = timeout – 3000

Global error handler. Supported errors in the HTTP Header
To better understand returned results from the API we are now returning more information about the possible API problesms right in the HTTP Header.

Some of the new Status Codes:
200 – OK
500 – Unexpected Error from the API side
520 – Errors related with the empty results

If HTTP Status Code is <> from 200, then we also respond with [Message] element in the response body that will provide more user friendly message what the error is about.

Changes in the data output model

We are returning only objects which are currently in use. Objects as PING / HTTPGET etc are hidden for DIG. And the same rules exists for the others type of tests

e.g based on results for DIG OLD RESPONSE:

"StartDIGTestByCountryResult": [ { "ASN": { "AsnID": "AS12741", "AsnName": "Netia SA" }, "CDNEdgeNode": null, "Country": { "CountryCode": "PL", "CountryFlag": "http:\/\/speedcheckerapi.blob.core.windows.net\/bsc-img-country-logos\/pl.png", "CountryName": "Poland" }, "DIGDns": [ { "AdditionalInformation": null, "Destination": "www.broadbandspeedchecker.co.uk", "QueryTime": "13", "Status": "NoError" } ], "DateTimeStamp": "\/Date(1435158434263+0000)\/", "HTTPGet": null, "ID": 31658310, "Location": { "Latitude": 50.320525, "Longitude": 19.132328 }, "LoginDate": null, "Network": { "LogoURL": "https:\/\/speedcheckerapi.blob.core.windows.net\/bsc-img-providers\/logo_0039_ef7487217cc7_60.jpg", "NetworkID": "226", "NetworkName": "Netia SA" }, "PAGELoad": null, "Ping": null, "PingTime": null, "TRACERoute": null } ]

NEW RESPONSE:

"StartDIGTestByCountryResult": [ { "ASN": { "AsnID": "AS197480", "AsnName": "SerczerNET Malgorzata Nienaltowska" }, "Country": { "CountryCode": "PL", "CountryFlag": "http:\/\/speedcheckerapi.blob.core.windows.net\/bsc-img-country-logos\/pl.png", "CountryName": "Poland" }, "DIGDns": [ { "Status": "OK", "Destination": "www.broadbandspeedchecker.co.uk", "QueryTime": "1" } ], "DateTimeStamp": "\/Date(1435150848253+0000)\/", "ID": 17854019, "Location": { "Latitude": 53.29718, "Longitude": 23.28092 }, "Network": { "LogoURL": null, "NetworkID": "3362", "NetworkName": "SerczerNET Malgorzata Nienaltowska" } } ]

New properties available for probe results

For all probe results we added new property: Status

Status: OK, Timeout , TtlExpired (+ potentially other statuses added in the future)

For Ping and Traceroute we added also PingTime array, which can be useful to calculate standard deviations and other statistical analysis of the individual pings that were performed.

Ping Response "Ping": [ { "Status": "OK", "Destination": "www.interia.pl", "Hostname": "www.interia.pl", "IP": "217.74.65.27", "PingTime": 12, "PingTimeArray": [ "13", "11", "12" ] } ]

Traceroute response

"TRACERoute": [ { "Destination": "www.interia.pl", "HostName": "www.interia.pl", "IP": "217.74.65.27", "Tracert": [ { "HostName": "", "IP": "10.27.1.1", "PingTimeArray": [ "1", "0", "0" ], "Ping1": "1", "Ping2": "0", "Ping3": "0", "Status": "OK" }, { "HostName": "", "IP": "178.217.192.254", "PingTimeArray": [ "42", "31", "33" ], "Ping1": "42", "Ping2": "31", "Ping3": "33", "Status": "OK" }, { "HostName": "interia.tpix.pl", "IP": "195.149.232.12", "PingTimeArray": [ "12", "14", "11" ], "Ping1": "12", "Ping2": "14", "Ping3": "11", "Status": "OK" }, { "HostName": "", "IP": "217.74.64.187", "PingTimeArray": [ "11", "11", "11" ], "Ping1": "11", "Ping2": "11", "Ping3": "11", "Status": "OK" }, { "HostName": "www.interia.pl", "IP": "217.74.65.27", "PingTimeArray": [ "12", "11", "13" ]", "Ping1":"12", "Ping2":"11", "Ping3":"13", "Status":"OK"}]}]}

We have deployed few new improvements to the API.

Support for new parameters

PING Test methods

ttl – Max allowed hops for packet (default=128, max=255)
bufferSize – Size of the Packet data (default=32, max=65500)
fragment – Fragmentation of sending packets. (default=1)
resolve – IP addresses will be resolved to domain names for each hop (default=0)
ipv4only – Force using IPv4. If no IPv4 IP address is returned will return error (default=0)
ipv6only – Force using IPv6. If no IPv6 IP address is returned will return error (default=0)

DIGDNS Test methods

commandTimeout – DNS query timeout in milliseconds (default=1000ms)
retries – Total number of retries (default=0)

TRACEROUTE Test methods

maxFailedHops – Stop the command execution after maximum errors in a row (e.g. stop after 5 ping timeouts, default=0)
ttlStart – First Hop from which the trace route should start (default=1) bufferSize – Size of the Packet data (default=32, max=65500)
fragment – Fragmentation of sending packets (default=1)
resolve – IP addresses will be resolved to domain names for each hop (default=0)
ipv4only – Force using IPv4. If no IPv4 IP address is returned will return error (default=0)
ipv6only – Force using IPv6. If no IPv6 IP address is returned will return error (default=0)

PAGELOAD Test methods

commandTimeout – Maximum allowed time for pageload in milliseconds

HTTPGET Test methods

commandTimeout – Maximum allowed time to send HTTP GET request and receive the response in milliseconds
maxBytes – Max bytes to download from response stream

2. Changes in how timeouts are handled by the API

Each method has 2 main time out parameters:

timeout – Amount of time in milliseconds in which API responds with result
commandTimeout – timeout for the actual test command. For most of the tests its obvious that commandTimeout correlates with total timeout of the API method. However, in case of Ping and Traceroute its not the case. Ping methods by default execute 3 ping commands. Traceroute executes even more and it depends on many parameters such as TTL, count etc.