How to test internet bandwidth with command line
There are multiple tools we could use to test the internet bandwidth at home. What if a server?
In China, PC users could install applications like tencent PC manager to test downloading and uploading speed. However, Mac users and Linux server administrators might want to know their bandwidth in specific scenes. If you have a screen and a web browser, just click GO on speedtest.org home page could be the easiest way. If you don’t, no worries, a command line tool speedtest-cli will help you.
3 ways to install
This tool which works with Python 2.4 ~ 3.7 could be installed on Windows, Mac OSX and Linux. What you need to do is using pip command,
pip install speedtest-cli
Or clone the whole project from Github,
git clone https://github.com/sivel/speedtest-cli.git
python speedtest-cli/setup.py install
If you haven’t install commands pip or git, the traditional installation way is effected as well.
wget -O speedtest-cli https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sivel/speedtest-cli/master/speedtest.py
chmod +x speedtest-cli
start to test
Extremely easy. Input speedtest-cli into the terminal,
Actually the tool is so strong that you have these parameters to use,
$ speedtest-cli -h
usage: speedtest-cli [-h] [--no-download] [--no-upload] [--bytes] [--share]
[--simple] [--csv] [--csv-delimiter CSV_DELIMITER]
[--csv-header] [--json] [--list] [--server SERVER]
[--exclude EXCLUDE] [--mini MINI] [--source SOURCE]
[--timeout TIMEOUT] [--secure] [--no-pre-allocate]
[--version]
Command line interface for testing internet bandwidth using speedtest.net.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
https://github.com/sivel/speedtest-cli
optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
--no-download Do not perform download test
--no-upload Do not perform upload test
--bytes Display values in bytes instead of bits. Does not
affect the image generated by --share, nor output from
--json or --csv
--share Generate and provide a URL to the speedtest.net share
results image, not displayed with --csv
--simple Suppress verbose output, only show basic information
--csv Suppress verbose output, only show basic information
in CSV format. Speeds listed in bit/s and not affected
by --bytes
--csv-delimiter CSV_DELIMITER
Single character delimiter to use in CSV output.
Default ","
--csv-header Print CSV headers
--json Suppress verbose output, only show basic information
in JSON format. Speeds listed in bit/s and not
affected by --bytes
--list Display a list of speedtest.net servers sorted by
distance
--server SERVER Specify a server ID to test against. Can be supplied
multiple times
--exclude EXCLUDE Exclude a server from selection. Can be supplied
multiple times
--mini MINI URL of the Speedtest Mini server
--source SOURCE Source IP address to bind to
--timeout TIMEOUT HTTP timeout in seconds. Default 10
--secure Use HTTPS instead of HTTP when communicating with
speedtest.net operated servers
--no-pre-allocate Do not pre allocate upload data. Pre allocation is
enabled by default to improve upload performance. To
support systems with insufficient memory, use this
option to avoid a MemoryError
--version Show the version number and exit
For example, if you want to list all the test nodes in your country/region, try command like this,
(ignore the Ukraine one …)
Share(Show off) you bandwidth? Use –share,
Notice the URL? Visit it and you could get a graphical Internet bandwidth testing result like the cover shows,
Python API
This tool also provides python APIs which might help you to aviod MemoryError, set a mini server or set Bind source. Read the wiki to learn how to use them.
ref: https://github.com/sivel/speedtest-cli