How to run an internet speed test on Ubuntu/Debian server

OVERVIEW

Why speed test your hosted VPS or dedicated server? Answer: To test your server’s network connection. You need to make sure your cloud service provider is giving you adequate upload and download speeds as that is a major (BUT NOT THE ONLY) factor in your customer’s experience and/or app’s responsiveness. Also, different packages from the same provider can give completely different speeds. I’ll test 2 different Linode sizes and see if they provide the advertised bandwidth.

INSTALLATION

1st, we need to install the command line tool that enables data transfer over various network protocols. It may already be installed.

sudo apt-get install curl

The next command detects your OS, checks that curl and gpg are installed, runs updates, allows repositories using HTTPS, adds Ookla’s SpeedTest application to the application update source list, imports packagecloud’s gpg key, and reruns updates.

curl -s https://packagecloud.io/install/repositories/ookla/speedtest-cli/script.deb.sh | sudo bash

Install Ookla’s Speedtest client.

sudo apt-get install speedtest

Now run the application.

speedtest

You’ll need to type yes to proceed. The application will automatically use the nearest servers to perform the speed tests.

You can use speedtest -h for help/listing available commands. You can use speedtest -L to list the nearest servers then use the speedtest -s [Server ID] command to test that specific server.

RESULTS

Here are some results. I ran speed tests multiple times using different Ookla servers and averaged them. Below is the my best result using the Nanode 1GB plan.

Here is the best result using the Linode 16GB plan.

This isn’t a sponsored post but Linode comes through with their promises. Let me know below your results or if you have a different application that you use for network benchmarking your Linux servers.