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macOS Monterey's new network quality tool is surprisingly good

danpetrov.xyz

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

#71

Post by blakesterz »

handrous wrote: post #48
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 are tons of excellent pieces of Apple software that come with iOS[EDIT macOS, that is] (or are free to download). Preview's simply amazing and I miss it very much on every other platform, including iOS , but probably doesn't count as a hidden gem. One that took me way too long to discover was the Digital Color Meter. It's a color picker that comes up instantly (much of what's so great about Apple's software is…

Oh wow, how have I never noticed the Color Meter!? Thanks for pointing to that!

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

#72

Post by gcbirzan »

masklinn wrote: post #7
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?

“Network Link Conditioner” essentially does the opposite but it’s a really neat tool: it lets you degrade your connection, so you can test how software reacts to degraded network conditions, and don’t need to install and configure third-party proxies and the like. The biggest drawback is it affects the entire machine, you can’t enable the conditioner on a per-process basis, so it can be a bit rough on the other “norm…

The other major drawback is that you cannot download it without an iCloud account...

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

#73

Post by mobilemidget »

X-Istence wrote: post #41
artificialLimbs wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

#!/bin/zsh ip addr | grep $localNetworkPrefix ping $localGateway ping 1.1.1.1 ping $DNS01 ping $DNS02 open -a Safari https://downdetector.com/status/%1 Do `chmod +x ./scriptname.sh` to make executable and run with argument (e.g. net.sh facebook) to check a particular service. Edit: Thanks @Shared404

ip doesn't exist on macOS. That is a Linuxism. You can use the following: netstat -rn -f inet | grep default | head -n 1 | awk '{ print $2 }' To get the default gateway that is the preferred one on macOS, so you don't need to hard code it. scutil --dns Will display the DNS servers/split DNS configuration as well.

I still type 'ip a s' on osx machines multiple times a week, even though I know it doesn't exist for many years.

If on wifi one can also simply option click the wifi icon in the menu bar. Maybe some people don't know yet, it was a late discovery for me option click shows more information there.

For quick internet access check I like 'curl ipconfig.sh'

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

#74

Post by ksbrooksjr »

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?

This is much simpler than some of the other utilities mentioned, but I love pbcopy and pbpaste. Being able to pipe from stdout straight to the clipboard, or vice versa, is really useful.

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

#75

Post by m0dest »

This is awesome. I hope the client code will be included in the Apple's open source repository [1] after they update it for Monterey. It's hard to fully rely on a test without seeing its implementation, especially the responsiveness portion.

[1] https://opensource.apple.com/

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

#76

Post by dzhiurgis »

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…

Will have to test this at night. Apple TV app is barely useable here at 8-9PM here, constantly dropping to 480p or worse. Torrents is still better UX in 2021.

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

#77

Post by quesera »

epistasis wrote: post #56
quesera wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's fairly universal across the nearly 80 years of Mac 2021 - 1984 == 37 I concur with your other points. :)

Oops, I thought I had typed 40... 80 would have been in the days of Turing!

It's always good when a surprisingly-large measurement of historical distance is just a simple typo.

Far better than when the surprise fades into realization that the measurement is accurate, and that your internal estimate of time acceleration needs updating!

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

#78

Post by crooked-v »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #76
e_proxus wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Will have to test this at night. Apple TV app is barely useable here at 8-9PM here, constantly dropping to 480p or worse. Torrents is still better UX in 2021.

With such specific timing, my suspicions would immediately jump to oversubscribed cable internet and the ISP doing some shenanigans to prioritize non-streaming over streaming traffic in some way.

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

#79

Post by fbcpck »

handrous wrote: post #48
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 are tons of excellent pieces of Apple software that come with iOS[EDIT macOS, that is] (or are free to download). Preview's simply amazing and I miss it very much on every other platform, including iOS , but probably doesn't count as a hidden gem. One that took me way too long to discover was the Digital Color Meter. It's a color picker that comes up instantly (much of what's so great about Apple's software is…

Spotlight is also amazing, but like Preview I suppose it doesn't count as a hidden gem.

Finder's column view is also excellent. I think it's the best way to navigate the filesystem through GUI; the way it displays nested directories is just super nice. It makes me wonder why other OS don't haven't copied this layout in their filesystem explorer.

Grapher.app is also perhaps a hidden gem.

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

#80

Post by js2 »

Zarel wrote: post #68
ilikepi wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 "Wi…

I've poked around with Wireless Diagnostics in the past and I've never seen any graphs or signal strength metrics. It's only ever created a diagnostics data file (which takes many minutes and can't be cancelled once it's started) and done nothing else. The diagnostics data file is annoying to read, too...

After you open Wireless Diagnostics, select Window > Performance.

There's also tool in the AppStore called WiFi Explorer that may be more what you're looking for.

https://www.intuitibits.com

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