Automated broadband speed testing

[mats]

One of my schools has recently had an upgrade to FTTC from a TalkTalk / OpenReach via a well known educational supplier whose name consists of just two letters. It was sold to us as having a minimum speed of X Mb/s. Sadly, they or their supplier seem to have confused the words "minimum" and "maximum", and instead of running for most of the time at around twice X Mb/s as we were promised, the connection only manages X Mb/s. During the install process, the engineers assured me that it was because of other people using the connection and that this was temporary.

 

To test this theory, I decided to run regular speed tests. Here's how it's done (minimal Linux experience required).

 

Requirements

- a linux machine. Any old debian derivative should do, other distros are likely to work. I used ubuntu server on a minimally resourced vmware VM. It'll need python 2.7 but that's likely to be pre-installed.

- speedtest_cli.py from https://github.com/sivel/speedtest-cli . Extract it from the "Download zip" link if you can't be bothered with git. (wget https://github.com/sivel/speedtest-cli/archive/master.zip)

 

Method

 

In your home dir, create a directory called speedtest. Put speedtest_ci.py in there.

 

Create batch file /home/[YOUR USERNAME]/speedtest/test.sh containing -

 

#!/bin/bash
DATE=$(date +"%Y-%m-%d_%H%M")
echo `date` >> /home/[YOUR USERNAME]/speedtest/speedtest.log
http_proxy="http://proxy.rmplc.co.uk:8080"
https_proxy="https://proxy.rmplc.co.uk:8080"
/home/[YOUR USERNAME]/speedtest/speedtest_cli.py --simple >> /home/[YOUR USERNAME]/speedtest/speedtest.log

 

Edit [YOUR USERNAME] appropriately. Drop / edit the proxy setting.

 

Make it executable -

chmod +x /home/[YOUR USERNAME]/speedtest/test.sh

 

Test it out. It should create a file called speedtest.log and write the results of each speed test to the end of it. (I suspect the ping time is in uS).

 

Mon Dec 1 10:12:18 GMT 2014
Ping: 1800000.0 ms
Download: 24.05 Mbits/s
Upload: 7.27 Mbits/s

 

Cron is a utility which can run commands at regular times. Each user can edit their cron entries with the crontab command.

 

Make a crontab entry with

crontab -e

 

Add this line

0 */4 * * *     export http_proxy="http://proxy.rmplc.co.uk:8080"; /home/[YOUR USERNAME]/speedtest/test.sh > /dev/null 2>&1

 

This will run your speed test at midnight then every 4 hours past (or 4, 8 am, midday, 4pm, 8pm, midnight).

 

When this has run for a day or two, your speedtest.log file will have a number of entries.

 

To just see the speeds -

egrep Down speedtest/speedtest.log

This shows just the lines containing the word "Down".

Download: 24.93 Mbits/s
Download: 25.05 Mbits/s
Download: 25.21 Mbits/s
Download: 25.10 Mbits/s
Download: 25.21 Mbits/s

 

To get speeds and times,

egrep 'GMT|Down' /home/[YOUR USERNAME]/speedtest/speedtest.log | perl -p -e 's/2014\n/ /'

This finds lines containing GMT or Down , passes them to Perl which finds "2014" followed by newline and strips out the newline.

 

egrep 'GMT|Down' /home/[YOUR USERNAME]/speedtest/speedtest.log | perl -p -e 's/2014\n/2014 /'
Thu Nov 27 16:02:01 GMT 2014 Download: 22.21 Mbits/s
Thu Nov 27 20:02:01 GMT 2014 Download: 25.17 Mbits/s
Fri Nov 28 00:02:01 GMT 2014 Download: 24.08 Mbits/s

 

To stop it running, edit crontab again

crontab -e

and remove the line previously inserted. Putting a hash in front of the line comments it out.

 

So, there we have it. Proof that our "minimum X Mb/s" line isn't what we were sold. Now for the fun part.

Edited December 1, 2014 by mats
minor edit

[snagrat]

I need to do this but have very little Linux experience.

 

Is it pretty easy?

[mats]

I need to do this but have very little Linux experience.

 

Is it pretty easy?

 

I thought so.

[synaesthesia]

EE perchance? (Exponential)

[SchoolsBroadband]

@mats any ISP that guarantees you speed on a standard FTTC line from BT is lying. BT's SLA to communication providers is "We guarantee a minimum of 12Mbit of speed for 90% of the time during the busiest 3 hour period". That's it.........

 

The only way to guarantee speeds is use full GEA-FTTC or EoFTTC which gives a minimum speed guarantee of xyz all day every day. This is more expensive though and I think at the moment we are the only ISP that offers this as standard on our higher end packages although I could be wrong.

 

If you need any more tech info let me know.

 

Good luck

 

Dave

[Arreks]

Is the 'minimum speed' they promised you in writing?

[mats]

Ta for the replies.

 

It was sold as "up to x, indicative y" which I appreciate isn't the same as "it'll run at z". However, it's running at y and never gets any higher (y is over twice x) so have an uncomfortable feeling that there's wriggle room which is about to be utilised.