Social Media Test Suite
The social media test suite measures the round-trip latency and reachability of a selection of major social media services, accounting for different endpoints that the social media service may use for different content types.
A single social media site can use a variety of endpoints for different content types (e.g. audio, video) and different activities (downloading and uploading). For example, Facebook uses a different set of servers when allowing users to download videos versus upload videos. This test captures round-trip latency to all of the supported combinations.
Available Social Media Tests
Facebook
Facebook Messenger
Instagram
Instagram Messenger
WhatsApp
Snapchat
X (formerly Twitter)
Media Types Supported
The following table summarizes the different platforms and media types that our test supports (where Y = supported and n = not supported):
Service
Download Text
Download Image
Download Video
Download Audio
Upload Text
Upload Image
Upload Video
Upload Audio
Facebook App
Y
Y
Y
n
Y
Y
Y
n
Facebook Messenger
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Instagram App
n
Y
Y
n
n
Y
Y
n
Instagram Messenger
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Snapchat
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
X
Y
Y
Y
n
Y
Y
Y
n
Lack of support for a particular combination is due to the social media service itself not supporting certain content types. For example, the main Facebook app does not support downloading or uploading audio clips, but the Messenger app does.
Note that we have split Instagram into two separate apps, even though they are delivered to the user as a single smartphone app. This is due to the private messaging feature within the Instagram app supporting different functionality that the main part of the app does not. Moreover, the private messaging feature of the Instagram app uses different endpoints to the main part of the app.
Social Media Test Targets
For each social media service, we determine the endpoints to test against by performing a traffic analysis of how their Android and iOS apps behaved. All apps, except for Facebook and Instagram, use a static set of endpoints. For example, X uses api.twitter.com for most operations. Of course, this does not prevent X from geographically load-balancing api.twitter.com via any cast- or DNS-based load-balancing, but all clients use this single hostname. Facebook and Instagram make use of the Facebook "FNA" (Facebook Network Appliance) caches for retrieval of image and video content. Facebook FNA caches are the on-premises caches that Facebook provides to large ISPs, much like Google does with GGC (Google Global Cache) or Netflix does with OCA (Open Connect Appliances). We use a DNS lookup to the Facebook homepage which provides us with the cache hostname from Meta. The cache hostname also gets a DNS lookup. The resulting IP address is measured with ICMP.
Additionally, the latency measurement mechanism can vary for some social media sites too. All services, with the exception of Snapchat, currently use ICMP to measure round-trip latency. For Snapchat we use HTTP time-to-first-byte because they front all of their API servers (currently hosted in the US) with Amazon's CloudFront reverse proxy, which is distributed globally. To just measure round-trip time to their CloudFront hostname would misrepresent the end-to-end latency that a user really experiences.
The social media test fully supports IPv4 and IPv6. It may optionally be run with DNS resolution performed via DNS-over-HTTPS or DNS-over-TLS, instead of using the default system resolver.
Social Media Test Example
While comparing different social media services in our study Measuring Broadband New Zealand, we discovered that latency to Snapchat's image servers - which are hosted in the United States - are around four tenths of a second on average. This would introduce noticeably slower performance compared to other chat services such as Whatsapp or Facebook/Instagram Messenger.
Social Media Test Configuration Options
Configure your social media test suite via the following tabs and fields.
Basic Settings
The basic settings tab contains only the settings detailed within Configuring Common Test Settings.
The Target setting is not configurable as each test execution automatically measures all supported social media targets.
Advanced Settings
Measurement
Media: Some applications do not support all media types. See supported media types per application at Media Types Supported. Defaults to 4 of 4 selected. Choose also at least one of:
Image
Audio
Video
Text
Direction: Defaults to Downlink but choose also Uplink.
Timeout: Maximum length of test duration. Defaults to 300 s, Choose also from 60-500 s.
Network
DSCP: Defaults to “Best Effort (DSCP 0) - Default”. Choose also from:
AF 11 (DSCP 10)
AF 12 (DSCP 12)
AF 13 (DSCP 14)
AF 21 (DSCP 18)
AF 22 (DSCP 20)
AF 23 (DSCP 22)
AF 31 (DSCP 26)
AF 32 (DSCP 28)
AF 33 (DSCP 30)
AF 41 (DSCP 34)
AF 42 (DSCP 36)
AF 43 (DSCP 38)
CS 1 (DSCP 8)
CS 2 (DSCP 16)
CS 3 (DSCP 24)
CS 4 (DSCP 32)
CS 5 (DSCP 40)
CS 6 (DSCP 48)
CS 7 (DSCP 56)
EF (DSCP 46)
Voice Admit (DSCP 44)
DNS Resolver
Override system default DNS: Manually sets the DNS server queried for the target domain. Otherwise, system default runs Do53 over UDP. Defaults to disabled.
If enabled, a dropdown appears where you can select a server address type and enter a server address. The dropdown defaults to “DNS server address”. If you choose this option, you must input a specified Do53 server for name resolution (UDP with TCP fallback). Choose also from:
DNS-over-HTTPS resolver URL: Uses a custom DoH server for name resolution: fully qualified resolver URL must begin with “https://” and end with “/dns-query”.
DNS-over-TLS resolver IP: Uses a custom DoT server for name resolution: input a resolver IP address.
Agent Testing Thresholds
Cross-traffic, downlink/dplink: Defaults to 25,000 bytes per second down/up.
CPU Load: Defaults to 30%. Range is from 1-100%.
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