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Run an Internet Speed Test from the Command Line

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Re: Run an Internet Speed Test from the Command Line

#31

Post by Nextgrid »

virtuallynathan wrote: post #26

speedtest-cli is garbage if you have >100Mbps Speeds. The dev refuses to acknowledge this: https://github.com/sivel/speedtest-cli/issues/226 Also not just me: https://github.com/sivel/speedtest-cli/issues/649 https://github.com/sivel/speedtest-cli/issues/648 https://github.com/sivel/speedtest-cli/issues/641 https://github.com/sivel/speedtest-cli/issues/616 https://github.com/sivel/speedtest-cli/issues/601 https://git…

Counterpoint: it’s accurate for me on a 1Gbps symmetric connection - it actually gives me a better result than the web speed test which I assume is limited by Javascript performance.

Re: Run an Internet Speed Test from the Command Line

#32

Post by fatbas202 »

virtuallynathan wrote: post #26

speedtest-cli is garbage if you have >100Mbps Speeds. The dev refuses to acknowledge this: https://github.com/sivel/speedtest-cli/issues/226 Also not just me: https://github.com/sivel/speedtest-cli/issues/649 https://github.com/sivel/speedtest-cli/issues/648 https://github.com/sivel/speedtest-cli/issues/641 https://github.com/sivel/speedtest-cli/issues/616 https://github.com/sivel/speedtest-cli/issues/601 https://git…

Was just looking through the thread for this comment.

Because of this issue, I spent an obscene amount of time trying to diagnose a network problem that didn't exist when I upgraded to 1Gb. Hopefully others can avoid the same mistake.

Re: Run an Internet Speed Test from the Command Line

#33

Post by felipelemos »

virtuallynathan wrote: post #26

speedtest-cli is garbage if you have >100Mbps Speeds. The dev refuses to acknowledge this: https://github.com/sivel/speedtest-cli/issues/226 Also not just me: https://github.com/sivel/speedtest-cli/issues/649 https://github.com/sivel/speedtest-cli/issues/648 https://github.com/sivel/speedtest-cli/issues/641 https://github.com/sivel/speedtest-cli/issues/616 https://github.com/sivel/speedtest-cli/issues/601 https://git…

He locked all above issues.

Re: Run an Internet Speed Test from the Command Line

#34

Post by PeterisP »

dspillett wrote: post #15

Note that some ISPs prioritise traffic to known speedtest targets, turning off traffic shaping rules that might otherwise slow bulk transfers. When this happens it means you are testing the likely maximum throughput of your connection not necessarily the throughput you will see more generally. This is why Netflix started fast.com - because it draws data from the same distribution points as their video streaming apps…

A busy public torrent is a bad predictor for me because my main bottleneck for most traffic seems to be after my ISP (i.e. their uplink or their international connection - possibly due to shaping and not a hard limit) not the 'last mile', so if a torrent has a single peer that's local then I can get multiple times larger speed than usually. Though with fiber in most cases speed can be ignored, as it's simply "enough" or limited by the server capacity on the other side.

Re: Run an Internet Speed Test from the Command Line

#35

Post by chrisweekly »

dspillett wrote: post #15

Note that some ISPs prioritise traffic to known speedtest targets, turning off traffic shaping rules that might otherwise slow bulk transfers. When this happens it means you are testing the likely maximum throughput of your connection not necessarily the throughput you will see more generally. This is why Netflix started fast.com - because it draws data from the same distribution points as their video streaming apps…

IME the best way to do it is to configure a WPT (WebpageTest) instance with geo-distributed clients, and trigger test runs from your local terminal.

Re: Run an Internet Speed Test from the Command Line

#36

Post by dspillett »

jermaustin1 wrote: post #27
dspillett wrote: post #15

Note that some ISPs prioritise traffic to known speedtest targets, turning off traffic shaping rules that might otherwise slow bulk transfers. When this happens it means you are testing the likely maximum throughput of your connection not necessarily the throughput you will see more generally. This is why Netflix started fast.com - because it draws data from the same distribution points as their video streaming apps…

That said, I can and do get 200mbps+ on fast.com (my preferred/goto speedtest), and still experience constant buffering and the "sorry we can't play that video right now" message that kicks me out but then just clicking play again works. I'm not saying it's their servers or network, but I haven't found a reason for it based on my fast.com results.

It may be that your ISP, or another organisation that your traffic flows through, has implemented an efficient and accurate-enough way to identify speed-test traffic from amongst the actual video traffic. Possibly just by assuming that after a few minutes of transfer or a certain amount of traffic, your current use is not likely to be just for speed testing.

I assume this is why the tester does not run an upstream test by default: otherwise the lack of a block of upstream traffic would be a good signal that video playing is going on rather than throughput testing.

Re: Run an Internet Speed Test from the Command Line

#37

Post by jermaustin1 »

dspillett wrote: post #36
jermaustin1 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That said, I can and do get 200mbps+ on fast.com (my preferred/goto speedtest), and still experience constant buffering and the "sorry we can't play that video right now" message that kicks me out but then just clicking play again works. I'm not saying it's their servers or network, but I haven't found a reason for it based on my fast.com results.

It may be that your ISP, or another organisation that your traffic flows through, has implemented an efficient and accurate-enough way to identify speed-test traffic from amongst the actual video traffic. Possibly just by assuming that after a few minutes of transfer or a certain amount of traffic, your current use is not likely to be just for speed testing. I assume this is why the tester does not run an upstream te…

Possibly. I wouldn't put anything past optimum after they started injecting advertisements for new channels and packages on my non-https traffic.

Re: Run an Internet Speed Test from the Command Line

#38

Post by metalliqaz »

felipelemos wrote: post #33
virtuallynathan wrote: post #26

speedtest-cli is garbage if you have >100Mbps Speeds. The dev refuses to acknowledge this: https://github.com/sivel/speedtest-cli/issues/226 Also not just me: https://github.com/sivel/speedtest-cli/issues/649 https://github.com/sivel/speedtest-cli/issues/648 https://github.com/sivel/speedtest-cli/issues/641 https://github.com/sivel/speedtest-cli/issues/616 https://github.com/sivel/speedtest-cli/issues/601 https://git…

He locked all above issues.

this project is the first time i've ever seen this kind of thing in problem reports. i've already seen enough to stay far away from that software.

Re: Run an Internet Speed Test from the Command Line

#39

Post by dspillett »

PeterisP wrote: post #34
dspillett wrote: post #15

Note that some ISPs prioritise traffic to known speedtest targets, turning off traffic shaping rules that might otherwise slow bulk transfers. When this happens it means you are testing the likely maximum throughput of your connection not necessarily the throughput you will see more generally. This is why Netflix started fast.com - because it draws data from the same distribution points as their video streaming apps…

A busy public torrent is a bad predictor for me because my main bottleneck for most traffic seems to be after my ISP (i.e. their uplink or their international connection - possibly due to shaping and not a hard limit) not the 'last mile', so if a torrent has a single peer that's local then I can get multiple times larger speed than usually. Though with fiber in most cases speed can be ignored, as it's simply "enough"…

Another option would be to spin up a few VMs on various pay-per-use cloud providers, perhaps VMs in a couple of Azure regions, and test by pulling data from those. The variety of regions will rule out local traffic problems at the other end, the pay-by-hour/minute/second nature of such VMs would make it a cheap test to run. Especially if you can leave the VMs configured but stopped between tests and have no cost in that state, so you pay nothing most of the time but don't have to wait for provisioning & configuration each time.

Or if you have external servers for other uses, and/or have friends who do, you could use those instead of needing to spin up anything new.

Re: Run an Internet Speed Test from the Command Line

#40

Post by reacweb »

teekert wrote: post #20

Hmm, it reports about a 10 times lower upload speed allthough my subscription is 50/50 symetrical. I can confirm that I usually do get to the correct speeds (~50 Mbit/s) when downloading things of my server... Where could this mismatch come form?

Maybe MB/s rather than Mb/s. The ratio is 8.
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