Linux Download Speed Test [Extra Quality]
Thibaut Silverman
Speedtest CLI brings the trusted technology and global server network behind Speedtest to the command line. Built for software developers, system administrators and computer enthusiasts alike, Speedtest CLI is the first official Linux-native Speedtest application backed by Ookla.
Our mission at Ookla is to make the internet better and faster for everyone by providing data and insights on real-world internet performance and quality. With billions of tests and coverage scans worldwide, we meet you where you are with apps for the devices you use most.
It only takes a few seconds to do a test, and it returns the transfer size and calculated bandwidth. I ran a few tests from my PC and my laptop, using my home server as the server machine. I recently put in Cat6 Ethernet around my house, so I get up to 1Gbps speeds from my wired connections but much lower speeds on WiFi connections.
You may notice where it recorded 16Gbps. That was me using the server to test itself, so it's just testing how fast it can write to its own disk. The server has hard disk drives, which are only 16Gbps, but my desktop PC gets 46Gbps, and my (newer) laptop gets over 60Gbps, as they have solid-state drives.
Knowing the speed of your network is a rather straightforward task with these tools. If you prefer to script or run these from the command line for the fun of it, any of the above projects will get you there. If you're after specific point-to-point metrics, iPerf is your go-to.
iPerf involves no writing to the disk, all test data is only ever in memory. Those devices performing better just happen to have better CPU performance to be able to better shuffle the packets around.
One thing to keep in mind is that the client is sending by default on iPerf. If you want, you can use the -R option to have the server send instead, to test against these public iPerf servers, in the downstream direction.
With the increase in people staying at home and spending more time on the Internet, ISPs have seen traffic loads higher than ever. If you noticed your network speed was slower at times, this global overload is the reason.
The tools in this guide help you check the Internet and LAN speed on a Linux machine. The article uses Ubuntu 20.04 for instructions, but the utilities work for any Linux distribution.
iPerf3 is a tool for active measurements of the maximum achievable bandwidth on IP networks.It supports tuning of various parameters related to timing, buffers and protocols (TCP, UDP, SCTP with IPv4 and IPv6).For each test it reports the bandwidth, loss, and other parameters.This is a new implementation that shares no code with the original iPerf andalso is not backwards compatible. iPerf was orginally developed by NLANR/DAST.iPerf3 is principally developed by ESnet/ Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.It is released under a three-clause BSD license.
Acknowledgements for iPerf1: Thanks to Mark Gates (NLANR), Alex Warshavsky (NLANR) and Justin Pietsch (University of Washington)who were responsible for the 1.1.x releases of Iperf.For iPerf 1.7, we would like to thank Bill Cerveny (Internet2), Micheal Lambert (PSC), Dale Finkelson (UNL)and Matthew Zekauskas (Internet2) for help in getting access to IPv6 networks / machines.Special thanks to Matthew Zekauskas (Internet2) for helping out in the FreeBSD implementation.Also, thanks to Kraemer Oliver (Sony) for providing an independent implementation of IPv6version of Iperf, which provided a useful comparison for testing our features.
I recently purchased a power line network adapter and wanted to see how it performed relative to the stated specs on the packaging. After playing around with wget and sftp to copy files from my desktop to my laptop I wondered if there was a better way to test network speed without involving the hard drive of my server or my client machines. What I found was that it's possible to use a few simple commands on the Linux command line to test local network speed without copying actual files.
Since I'm using this to test the speed of my home network, I need two machines up and running Linux on my LAN. I'll call the first machine Desktop and the second machine Laptop.
Now that the first machine, Desktop, is set up to listen, I'll use the second machine, Laptop, to send and receive data to test the network. The command below assumes that the IP address for Desktop is 192.168.2.2. Adjust the address accordingly for your network. From a terminal on Laptop, enter the following:
PS: this is rather poor way to test modern CPU. You will be exercising only single core and most likely only limited part of your CPU (no sse, etc). It is not trivial to write CPU benchmark, so you might want to use one of already available. For example, you can take a look at sysbench with something like sysbench --test=cpu --cpu-max-prime=20000 run.
Is there a reliable method to test these speeds via the command line? I know you can just download a file and look at the rate, but that depends on the speed of the hosting server and you don't get an upload speed =/
Check out iperf. Just start up iperf on your server and connect to it with iperf running on your workstation. It'll do bi-directional speed tests. If you want to test connectivity to other well-connected networks, there are some public iperf servers around. Just google and you'll find some.
You can test download speed with a fast download mirror. For example you could take a look at CacheFly's website, they usually have a link to 10MB and 100MB test files and leveraging a CDN you'll make sure to use a good, "near" server.
Testing your internet speed from the Linux terminal can be useful for troubleshooting connectivity issues or for monitoring the performance of your network. The process is straightforward and requires the use of a few simple commands. With the right tools, you can easily check the download and upload speeds of your internet connection and determine if it is working optimally.
The first step is to install the `speedtest-cli` tool. Which is a command-line interface for the popular speedtest.net service. To install the speedtest-cli, you can use the default package manager (Apt, DNF etc) or Python package manager (PIP) by running the following command in the terminal:
The speedtest-cli tool will now start testing your internet speed. This may take a few seconds to a minute, depending on your network connection. You will see the results displayed in the terminal, which will include the download speed, upload speed, and ping.
The download speed is the amount of data that your network can receive per second, while the upload speed is the amount of data that your network can send per second. The ping is the time it takes for a signal to be sent from your device to a server and back. A lower ping time means that your network is faster and more responsive.
With ZFS do I need to make this file bigger than the amount of RAM I have? I know it uses a lot of RAM and IIRC at least some of that is for ARC caching. I also have an SSD L2ARC cache, but I want that speed boost included in the tests.
@K4KFH You considered using the Phoronix Test Suite?
You have quite a few load-test scenarios in there (Flexible I/O Tester), and paired up with openbenchmarking.org you can even compare your results past the ones posted by either Michael (the owner of Phoronix) or other users. In terms of benchmarking your setup that's possibly the best tool you can use - using "dd" for trying to determine "what is my I/O on $drive_setup and $filesystem" is just plain awful.
I've combined both 32-bit & 64-bit CLI apps into a wee multi-arch ROXApp. Click on it, select 32- or 64-bit, and the test fires up in a dedicated terminal window. Click the 'X' to quit when you're done. Easy-peasy.
We will be running a speed test on various distros running Gnome. Finding the best preforming Linux distribution is a difficult thing to do. There are so many factors when trying to figure this out. The most important variable is what desktop environment you want to run. Gnome is one of the most popular desktop environments today as it comes pre-installed on many Linux distributions. We will run some general speed tests and benchmarking to see if there are any performance differences to consider.
As a case in point, HDDs are rather more affordable but also are only appropriate for transferring bulk files to/from disks which has a sequential read/write pattern as opposed to having a random read/write pattern. Accordingly, not every speed measurement method may be good for every disk.
Please note that speed is basically calculated in MBps. In this method, IOPS (Input/Output operations Per Second) is introduced for the sake of convenience. IOPS is just the same MB/s multiplied by BlockSize/1024, i.e. a bigger digit with the same unit.
We have all used tools like speedtest.net to test upload and download speeds. Whether it was to test the WiFi in that coffee shop (I use my own tether, never unknown hot spots), preparing for a LAN party (do people still do that?), or just a step in troubleshooting, we have all been there. For one reason or another you simply think you are being cheated of bandwidth, so you want independent verification of your speeds. This typically means opening a browser and going to a website to test your connection. But what if you want to run a speed test on a remote server? In this article we will discuss running an internet speed test from the Linux command line, and skipping the browser.
There are a few different tools you can use to run a speed test from the command line. To make things even more confusing the two most popular share the same exact name, but both use the speedtest.net service.
The second tool is built by Ookla, the people who bring you the speedtest.net website and service. Installing it requires you to add a repo for your package manager. But the maintainers offer simple instructions for installation.
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