Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

macOS Monterey's new network quality tool is surprisingly good

danpetrov.xyz

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 99 posts

Re: macOS Monterey's new network quality tool is surprisingly good

#11

Post by exikyut »

danpetrov wrote: post #3
blakesterz wrote: post #2

This is a neat little tool. I had no idea that was hiding in there. Anyone have any other little hidden gems on MacOS?

There is also "networksetup", which allows you to do pretty much anything you want with network configuration. Useful if you want to e.g. automate VPN network switching or locations.

Oh no. Oh no oh no.

You don't mean Apple's implemented the Wi-Fi autoconfig functionality Ubuntu failed to deliver in ~2008, do you?

Because if they have... they'll have done it... correctly.

If the binary and/or supporting libraries have any references to FieldAgents in them... we're doomed. That's Skynet, right there.

Re: macOS Monterey's new network quality tool is surprisingly good

#13

Post by afavour »

e_proxus wrote: post #9
screenshot wrote: post #5

Interestingly it uses their own CDN infrastructure by default by checking https://mensura.cdn-apple.com/api/v1/gm/config for which endpoint to use.

That's also the beauty of Fast.com, that it uses the Netflix content servers as benchmark and not some ISP edge hosted Speedtest server with special priority. That gives a more realistic expectation of how Netflix, and in this case Apple downloads, will actually perform. And it can't be artificially boosted by the ISP. That being said, I assume both Netflix and Apple have very special CDNs with ISP co-located content…

There is a flip side to fast.com, though: it’s much more likely that it will encounter throttled speeds on mobile devices, since many unlimited plans keep the connection to Netflix artificially slow.

Not endorsing that for a second but I was using fast.com as an absolute measure of internet speed until I realised this. But speedtest has the issues you’ve outlined too, there are very few 100% reliable options!

Re: macOS Monterey's new network quality tool is surprisingly good

#14

Post by xyzzy_plugh »

mahathu wrote: post #10
blakesterz wrote: post #2

This is a neat little tool. I had no idea that was hiding in there. Anyone have any other little hidden gems on MacOS?

In the file settings ("Get Info") you can set a "stationary pad" flag means whenever the file gets edited, a copy is created, and the original file doesn't change. When you're taking a screenshot of a portion of the screen you can hold the spacebar to move the rectangle around.

Is this Copy-on-Write? Is the copy a real file or is this a filesystem implementation detail?

Re: macOS Monterey's new network quality tool is surprisingly good

#15

Post by exikyut »

screenshot wrote: post #5

Interestingly it uses their own CDN infrastructure by default by checking https://mensura.cdn-apple.com/api/v1/gm/config for which endpoint to use.

Ah, thanks for this! I was going to ask if someone could run `strings` on the binary.

I get back:

  {
    "version": 1,
    "urls": {
      "small_https_download_url": "https://mensura.cdn-apple.com/api/v1/gm/small",
      "large_https_download_url": "https://mensura.cdn-apple.com/api/v1/gm/large",
      "https_upload_url": "https://mensura.cdn-apple.com/api/v1/gm/slurp"
    },
    "test_endpoint": "ausyd2-edge-bx-006.aaplimg.com"
  }
I can't pinpoint the semantic value of `test_endpoint`. However,

- .../small gives me 0 bytes

- .../large gives me 4 gigabytes (!!) which I presume I am expected to range-request parts of

- .../slurp accepts input and gives me some stats back.

Upload tests are simple:

  $ head -c 1048576 /dev/zero | curl -vvv -F 'test=@-' https://mensura.cdn-apple.com/api/v1/gm/slurp
  [...]
  {"DurationMs":11373,"Bytes":1048729,"BPS":92212}
(Excuse my really bad ADSL2+.)

The above is on Linux but I expect the effort to port that to macOS would be low. By all means post any needed modifications if you figure that out.

Re: macOS Monterey's new network quality tool is surprisingly good

#16

Post by OskarS »

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #14
mahathu wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the file settings ("Get Info") you can set a "stationary pad" flag means whenever the file gets edited, a copy is created, and the original file doesn't change. When you're taking a screenshot of a portion of the screen you can hold the spacebar to move the rectangle around.

Is this Copy-on-Write? Is the copy a real file or is this a filesystem implementation detail?

APFS has CoW semantics, so I would assume it uses the APFS filesystem features.

Re: macOS Monterey's new network quality tool is surprisingly good

#18

Post by ilikepi »

blakesterz wrote: post #2

This is a neat little tool. I had no idea that was hiding in there. Anyone have any other little hidden gems on MacOS?

macOS has had a "hidden" WiFi diagnostic tool for years. It produces real-time-ish graphs of (IIRC) three different signal strength metrics, and it also dumps the data to a file on the desktop as it's doing so. By holding down the "Option" key and clicking the WiFi icon in the menu bar, the dropdown menu will display additional information about the wireless interface, and it will also include an entry that reads "Wireless Diagnostics..." or similar.

Re: macOS Monterey's new network quality tool is surprisingly good

#19

Post by judge2020 »

e_proxus wrote: post #9
screenshot wrote: post #5

Interestingly it uses their own CDN infrastructure by default by checking https://mensura.cdn-apple.com/api/v1/gm/config for which endpoint to use.

That's also the beauty of Fast.com, that it uses the Netflix content servers as benchmark and not some ISP edge hosted Speedtest server with special priority. That gives a more realistic expectation of how Netflix, and in this case Apple downloads, will actually perform. And it can't be artificially boosted by the ISP. That being said, I assume both Netflix and Apple have very special CDNs with ISP co-located content…

Another issue with Fast.com is that sometimes it'll choose an OpenConnect box, which is inherently a box at a super close ISP datacenter meant for achieving gigabit speed without the ISP incurring upstream transit costs.
Post reply on HN