How to Test Your Internet Speed Bidirectionally from Command Line Using ‘Speedtest-CLI’ Tool
We always need to check the speed of the Internet connection at home and office. What we do for this? Go to websites like Speedtest.net and begin test. It loads JavaScript in the web browser and then select best server based upon ping and output the result. It also uses a Flash player to produce graphical results.
What about headless server, where isn’t any web based browser and the main point is, most of the servers are headless. The another bottleneck of such web browser based speed testing is that, you can’t schedule the speed testing at regular interval. Here comes an application “Speedtest-cli” that removes such bottlenecks and let you test the speed of Internet connection from command line.
What is Speedtest-cli
The application is basically a script developed in Python programming Language. It measures Internet Bandwidth speed bidirectionally. It used speedtest.net infrastructure to measure the speed. Speedtest-cli is able to list server based upon physical distance, test against specific server, and gives you URL to share the result of your internet speed test.
To install latest speedtest-cli tool in Linux systems, you must have Python 2.4-3.4 or higher version installed on the system.
Install speedtest-cli in Linux
There are two ways to install speedtest-cli tool. The first method involves the use of python-pip
package while the second method is to download the Python script, make it executable and run, here I will cover both ways….
Install speedtest-cli Using pythin-pip
First you need to install python-pip
package, then afterwards you can install the speedtest-cli tool using pip command as shown below.
$ sudo apt-get install python-pip $ sudo pip install speedtest-cli
To upgrade speedtest-cli, at later stage, use.
$ sudo pip install speedtest-cli --upgrade
Install speedtest-cli Using Python Script
First download the python script from github using wget command, unpack the downloaded file (master.zip) and extract it..
$ wget https://github.com/sivel/speedtest-cli/archive/master.zip $ unzip master.zip
After extracting the file, go to the extracted directory speedtest-cli-master
and make the script file executable.
$ cd speedtest-cli-master/ $ chmod 755 speedtest_cli.py
Next, move the executable to /usr/bin
folder, so that you don’t need to type the full path everytime.
$ sudo mv speedtest_cli.py /usr/bin/
Testing Internet Connection Speed with speedtest-cli
1. To test Download and Upload speed of your internet connection, run the speedtest-cli
command without any argument as shown below.
$ speedtest_cli.py
2. To check the speed result in bytes in place of bits.
$ speedtest_cli.py --bytes
3. Share your bandwidth speed with your friends or family. You are provided with a link that can be used to download an image.
# speedtest_cli.py --share
The following picture is a sample speed test result generated using above command.
4. Don’t need any additional information other than Ping, Download and upload?
$ speedtest_cli.py --simple
5. List the speedtest.net
server based upon physical distance. The distance in km is mentioned.
$ speedtest_cli.py --list
6. The last stage generated a huge list of servers sorted on the basis of distance. How to get desired output? Say I only want to see the speedtest.net server located in Mumbai (India).
$ speedtest_cli.py --list | grep -i Mumbai
7. Test connection speed against a specific server. Use Server Id generated in example 5 and example 6 in above.
$ speedtest_cli.py --server [server ID] $ speedtest_cli.py --server [5060] ## Here server ID 5060 is used in the example.
8. To check the version number and help of speedtest-cli
tool.
$ speedtest_cli.py --version
$ speedtest_cli.py --help
Note: Latency reported by tool is not its goal and one should not rely on it. The relative latency values output is responsible for server selected to be tested against. CPU and Memory capacity will influence the result to certain extent.
Conclusion
The tool is must for system administrators and developers. A simple script which runs without any issue. I must say that the application is wonderful, lightweight and do what it promises. I disliked Speedtest.net for the reason it was using flash, but speedtest-cli gave me a reason to love them.
speedtest_cli is a third party application and should not be used to automatically record the bandwidth speed. Speedtest.net is used by millions of users and it is a good idea to Set Your Own Speedtest Mini Server.
That’s all for now, till then stay tuned and connected to Tecmint. Don’t forget to give your valuable feedback in the comments below. Like and share us and help us get spread.
This would be more useful if it could be used between two servers on the same internal network; between subnets and over VPN’s and not just “yet another internet speedtest” application.
I noticed that attempting to run:
‘speedtest_cli.py’
…from the terminal after the two packages were installed using ‘apt’, the result was no command found running Linux Mint 18.1). It appears that the correct command is:
‘speedtest-cli’ (with a ‘dash’ not an ‘underscore’ and no ‘.py’ at the end)
The above works fine although I tend to like to see the results in bytes not bits so I added –bytes at the end.
@Kirk,
If you’ve installed speedtest-cli using python-pip, then you will get speedtest-cli executable, and those who’ve followed Python script installation will get speedtest_cli.py.
I hope you get it..Thanks
Thanks – “speedtest-cli” worked for me
You said it “should not be used to record internet speed automatically”. Why? I’d like to have this scheduled to run regularly and keep a log of my internet speeds to use when addressing poor service with my ISP.
3. Share your bandwidth speed with your friends or family. You are provided with a link that can be used to download an image.
in this section, missing the example of the command line :-)
# speedtest_cli.py –share
@Verow,
Thanks for updating that missing command about sharing network bandwidth usage report, updated in the article..
I don’t suppose this will install on Mac OS?
Why do you say that? Mac OS is BSD under the covers. But, you will have to make sure Xcode is already installed first which is a free download from the Mac App store.
Do this in a Terminal window after you have installed Xcode:
1. Think of a location where you would want to keep the source files and “cd” into that directory, for example, I keep my sources in ~/src
2. Download the code from GitHub:
sudo git clone https://github.com/sivel/speedtest-cli.git
The above may generate a message saying you have to agree to Xcode’s license agreement before being allowed to use Xcode.
Type in “agree” when prompted.
3. You will now have a directory titled speedtest-cli; cd into this directory
4. Install the sources:
sudo python ./setup.py install
It should run without any warnings or errors (will get installed in /usr/local/bin).
5. Now you can run the following for the help screen (usage info):
speedtest-cli -h
couldn’t install speedtest-cli in centOS 6.7 . Following error occured:
yum install speedtest-cli
Loaded plugins: fastestmirror, refresh-packagekit, security
Setting up Install Process
Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile
* base: mirror.tadu.vn
* epel: http://ftp.cuhk.edu.hk
* extras: mirror.tadu.vn
* updates: mirror.nbrc.ac.in
No package speedtest-cli available.
Error: Nothing to do
@Spandan,
There isn’t any speedtest-cli package available from Yum repositories, the only way is to install it from PIP tool as described in this article. So, first install pip package and then do pip to install the speedtest-cli package as shown in this article..
CENTOS 6.6
speedtest ver. 0.3.2
Change line 343 in the script
https
to
http
Voilà :)
Thanks waldi, for your acknowledgement.
keep Connected!