In today’s society, achieving the fastest internet speed is not only about the technical aspect but also about the satisfaction of knowing that we have the speed we are supposed to. Although it is easy to test your internet speed on platforms such as speedtest.net, it would be wise to test the connection between two devices in your home network for multiple reasons. For example, if your speed isn’t as fast, determining possible tailbacks will be much easier. Or if your internet performance is fine and you want to know if all of your local devices’ connections are fast for performing tasks such as streaming games to your TV. This article will list resources available that make it extremely easy to test your network speed.
Common Methods.
A “go-to” to test your network speed is iPerf. Internet Performance is a command-line tool that includes advanced options if they’re necessary. However, setting this up can be considered difficult. Additionally, there are two versions of iPerf. iPerf2, and iPerf3. Unlike the names suggest, iPerf3 is not a newer version. Both of these are being developed separately.
Another introductory method to test your network speed is to share files between two computers Using a large file will quickly determine your speed. However, you may be limited to the speed of your hard drive or SSD. Furthermore, setting up a local transfer between two computers is often difficult. Especially if the computers’ operating systems aren’t the same. Luckily there is now an easier alternative to these methods.
OpenSpeedTest.
OpenSpeedTest is a free open-source HTML5 Network Performance Estimation Tool written in Vanilla Javascript. OpenSpeedTest is virtually available on almost every native app platform such as Google Play, GitHub, Apple’s App Store for iPhones and Macs, and even Snap Store for Linux. While this is available on almost all of the App Store, a traditional .exe installation is still an option.
How to Use OpenSpeedTest.
Once you have the program installed, it should appear as “OpenSpeedTest-Server.” Once the application is opened, you will be presented with an IP address and port to connect to on any device. No additional installations are required. The device you’re running OpenSpeedTest on will act as the server. On the other side, it will work as a webpage. In contrast to iPerf where you’re not only running it as a server on one device, the other device serves as a Client. With OpenSpeedTest once you connect the page on the other device, you simply start. Tests consist of upload and download speeds, along with ping and jitter. To test again, you simply refresh the page.
Advanced Features.
While the user interface is simple, advanced features and settings are available. This is done by adding parameters after the question mark to the URL in a browser. For example, adding “?stress=Low” to the end of a URL will run a continuous test for five minutes. Other parameters are available that include setting the amount of parallel connections, changing the number of ping samples, conducting the test without having to manually start it, and many more. To view the entire list, visit their main GitHub project page.
How Reliable is It?
In terms of testing the speed, I consider it very reliable. When comparing iPerf3 running on an application for my iPhone, it seems to work as the Client. I then ran the server on my desktop. The results were similar enough to where I would credit it to minute-by-minute fluctuations in terms of Wi-Fi speed. After installing the OpenSpeedTester Docker Container on my Synology NAS, there seemed to be a difference between the tools. From my desktop with OpenSpeedTest, the download speed was approximately 2Gbps, and the upload speed maxed at around 8Gbps. To verify my results, I ran a test with iPerf2 from my desktop to the NAS, because there are docker images for iPerf2, and iPerf3 as well. Additionally, results also presented a max of around 9.5Gbps. Much higher than 2Gbps OpenSpeedTest was showing earlier. This enlightened me that something might be unusual regarding my desktop’s connection, as well as the possibility that something was causing certain network connections to slow down. I eventually determined that a part of it was how Windows handles network adapters if you have HyperVM Virtual Machines. It seems that this routes your Virtual Switch first. After disabling this, download speeds were much higher, closer to 5Gbps. Upload speeds were close to 9Gbps, closer to what it has been. I also tried figuring out what else could have been causing the slowdown. However, I have yet to figure this out. I was at least still able to get answers. I consider OpenSpeedTest to be a nice tool for diagnosing certain network issues, even if you still use iPerf2.
It is also worth mentioning that OpenSpeedTest isn’t only for general local home network tests. More advanced possible tests include hosting a version of an app as a widget on your website so users can test their speed, or setting up a speed test server on an enterprise network so employees can compare their speed to the company’s servers. Either from their office or connected via a VPN. For example, another idea can be if you have paid for a remote Virtual Machine in the cloud, and you can run it from there and you can check your connection speed. While this can be achieved through other software, the main benefit is it doesn’t require any main client-side software. So it can easily be accessed whenever. Additionally, this also makes it easier to test all of your devices quickly.
