This is great. I’ve encountered connectivity issues the past couple weeks and have been looking for tools like this.
Are there similar tools for assessing WiFi quality and bandwidth?
macOS Monterey's new network quality tool is surprisingly good
81–90 of 99 posts
Re: macOS Monterey's new network quality tool is surprisingly good
#82This 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…
I used to use sip. Didn’t realize Apple made a native one. Thanks!
Re: macOS Monterey's new network quality tool is surprisingly good
#83Nice! A network tool I've always wanted is one that automates the investigation you have to do manually if you are experienceing "internet issues". I mean, the check list is quite straightforward but still a pretty manual process, stuff like: - Do I have the expected IP? - Is there large packet loss or latency issues hinting at connectivity issues? - Can I ping the local gateway? - Can I ping to outside network? - Is…
Needs something about MTU too. A popular way to mess up a network is to configure it for a too large MTU and not send the ICMPs that would tell you otherwise.
Re: macOS Monterey's new network quality tool is surprisingly good
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Exactly. fast.com goes down the drain at exact same time.
That said it's pretty weird since there isn't much ATV users here.
Re: macOS Monterey's new network quality tool is surprisingly good
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
But who cares? If that's the same box that I connect to when I view Netflix content, then that's the performance I want to know about. Unless you are saying this OpenConnect box (will have to look whatever that is up later) is different from what connection is made when I hit Play, then that could be an issue. Then again, Fast.com is primarily a tool for Netflix. It let's its users feel like they are getting "useful"…
I think the key part is needing that understanding that it tells you how fast Netflix will perform, which is likely not the same as general internet performance. That can be useful to compare with tools like https://speed.cloudflare.com/ to see how your ISP's peering holds up but it's definitely an important nuance.
Just like the Netflix/fast.com tests networking speed to Netflix, the cloudflare test is for networking speed to cloudflare.
Neither of those give you a general internet performance indicator. You'd need to run many tests to really know, and it depends on your ISPs network, transit and peering, most of which is pretty opaque.
Re: macOS Monterey's new network quality tool is surprisingly good
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the key part is needing that understanding that it tells you how fast Netflix will perform, which is likely not the same as general internet performance. That can be useful to compare with tools like https://speed.cloudflare.com/ to see how your ISP's peering holds up but it's definitely an important nuance.
Just like the Netflix/fast.com tests networking speed to Netflix, the cloudflare test is for networking speed to cloudflare. Neither of those give you a general internet performance indicator. You'd need to run many tests to really know, and it depends on your ISPs network, transit and peering, most of which is pretty opaque.
Yes but the difference I had in mind is that Cloudflare is generally available (i.e. I can't host my website on OpenConnect) and they don't seem to push as far into local deployments. I've never seen a Cloudflare trace route stay entirely on my ISP's network whereas that's usually the case for Netflix.
Now, that might not be faster — my local Cloudflare endpoint appears to be ~16ms vs ~20ms for my ISP's Netflix deployment but it can tell you whether they're routinely underprovisioning peering capacity even if it doesn't give you as much data as a distributed test would.
Re: macOS Monterey's new network quality tool is surprisingly good
#87This 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…
I agree Preview.app is amazing. It's fast, has a lot of features and not bloated at all. However I think recent built-in apps are so bad almost unusable (like Music.app and TV.app), Preview's elegance seems to be a lost art in Apple.
Re: macOS Monterey's new network quality tool is surprisingly good
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I agree Preview.app is amazing. It's fast, has a lot of features and not bloated at all. However I think recent built-in apps are so bad almost unusable (like Music.app and TV.app), Preview's elegance seems to be a lost art in Apple.
What’s wrong with the AppleTV app? Perf is fine. UI/X is par with HBOMax, Disney+. Definitely better than Prime Video.
Re: macOS Monterey's new network quality tool is surprisingly good
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Can you expand a bit? Some quick Googling didn't reveal anything useful to me -- what exactly are you talking about?
Sure, and apologies (I think my comment went up to 2 points but now at 0, hehe).
It's a reference to https://xkcd.com/416/.
:P
Re: macOS Monterey's new network quality tool is surprisingly good
#90Earlier 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.
As predicted - it went down from 100-200 mbps to ~40.
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