Testing

Updated 1,557 Days AgoPublic

Actions

Speed Tests

• https://speedtest.shaw.ca/ (Fairly reliable speed testing directly to Shaw itself, useful particularly if you're on Shaw)
• https://github.com/sivel/speedtest-cli (nice simple CLI client for speed testing)
  • Available via pip install speedtest-cli
  • You can get the list of servers with the option --list, and specify a server with --server #
    • To use the same one as the Shaw interface above, speedtest-cli --server 4242
    • To use Telus in Edmonton instead, speedtest-cli --server 3050
    • More options:21236 for EPL, 10465 for UAlberta, 31362 for Olds' laudable actual use of the SuperNet

Latency and Packet Loss

While the speed tests above test latency, they don't test for packet loss, which can be a sunuvabitch. And sometimes you don't care about throughput anyways, because it's just lag that seems to be the problem.

• ping 1.1 is the easiest command to run, resolves to Cloudflare's 1.0.0.1, seems often faster (and it's lazier to type!) than Google's DNS servers at 8.8.8.8 or 8.8.4.4
  • For packet loss, one can leave a ping going for a long time and then cancel it with ⌃+c , or specify a number of requests to send.
    • On Windows, ping -n 200 1.1
    • On Linux / Mac, ping -c 200 1.1
    • Expected result on a good connection is ~30ms min/max/average or lower and no packet loss (note that for whatever reason, it's not infrequent in normal conditions for one packet to be lost; anything more, however, is a worry).
  • ping gmcl.com is a good choice here in Edmonton, and the writer of this documentation knows first-hand that it accepts ICMP requests ;)