Recommendations for Net Speed Testing

[mbustin]

Greetings, my network speed is fluctuating (some days green, some days yellow) and I'd like to make sure it's not my bridge by taking measurements at the bridge, and then at my gateway.

Any recommendations for a free monitoring tool that I can run for 24-48 hrs on my laptop that will log the network speed at preset intervals to a log or graph? Armed with that info I can call Comcast with some ammo if necessary. Thanks.

[NA9D]

Re: Recommendations for Net Speed Testing

It's kinda tough to continuously monitor speed over a long period as you need the bandwidth to be in use. Comcast does not guarantee any level of service. See their terms so you'd be hard pressed to get them to fix your fluctuations. That's the problem with cable modems - the speed is at the mercy of the network traffic.

What package do you have with Comcast?

Now, if you want to monitor your inbound and outbound traffic, you can use a program called PRTG Traffic Grapher (www.paessler.com). You will need a router that uses SNMP but you can also set up a packet sniffer from your PC. But this will only monitor your usage and not actual bandwidth.

You can also try a "smoke ping" from www.dslreports.com. You can also do line monitoring at DSL Reports where they ping your line and measure its latency. The line monitoring costs about $1.00 per week. But it just measures basic connectivity and ping times (useful for determining if you have a fluctuating DSL connection or a bad router at your ISP...) as opposed to raw speed...

[mbustin]

Re: Recommendations for Net Speed Testing

I have a regular triple play, phone, tv and internet that's supposed to be provide 6Mbps. I'm sure you're right about the terms of agreement - I haven't read it. It just seems that dropping below 2Mbps is making me thinking about calling tech support and having them check things out. I just want to be sure it's not my bridge.. Thanks for you suggestions and have a nice Thanksgiving!

[NA9D]

Re: Recommendations for Net Speed Testing

Might be worth calling them. Speed should regularly be above 2 Mbps. So it's probably worth checking into. Here's an idea...

Queue up a bunch of MPEG-2 video downloads from internetarchive.org. Let them run over a long period of time and see what happens to your downloads. Now, internet archive's servers are slow sometimes so this isn't 100% accurate, but it might give an indication of fluctuation.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving as well!

[Greg]

Re: Recommendations for Net Speed Testing

Greetings, my network speed is fluctuating (some days green, some days yellow) and I'd like to make sure it's not my bridge by taking measurements at the bridge, and then at my gateway.

Any recommendations for a free monitoring tool that I can run for 24-48 hrs on my laptop that will log the network speed at preset intervals to a log or graph? Armed with that info I can call Comcast with some ammo if necessary. Thanks.

I'm assuming you mean wireless bridge?
If you want to measure how well your wireless link performs you can use smokeping to test latency/packet loss from your laptop to the Vudu box (that's the one on the other side of the bridge right?).
That'll give you some indication of how well your bridge performs (it takes one unknown - Comcast - out of the equation).

-- Greg

[AndrewAZ]

Re: Recommendations for Net Speed Testing

I have a mac so I am not sure how it would work on windows. But in terminal (like DOS) I can ping my router or to my modem for however long I want. I usually ping to my modem to make sure my network isnt losing data or ping times.

[NA9D]

Re: Recommendations for Net Speed Testing

I have a mac so I am not sure how it would work on windows. But in terminal (like DOS) I can ping my router or to my modem for however long I want. I usually ping to my modem to make sure my network isnt losing data or ping times.

Actually, you can do a flood ping to really see how your bridge router works - I hadn't thought of that. I don't know the windows command flag for flood ping but on the mac/unix it is:

ping -f IP address

You might need to execute it with sudo as it's a pretty strenuous test. It sends packets out as fast as the computer can. If you try it on your ISPs router IPs, they'll probably get you in trouble real fast as it could easily result in a DoS attack.

[mbustin]

Re: Recommendations for Net Speed Testing

I'm assuming you mean wireless bridge?
If you want to measure how well your wireless link performs you can use smokeping to test latency/packet loss from your laptop to the Vudu box (that's the one on the other side of the bridge right?).
That'll give you some indication of how well your bridge performs (it takes one unknown - Comcast - out of the equation).

-- Greg

Yes, my vudu is on a wireless bridge. Maybe my network is fluctuating, so I thougth I'd test at the source first, and then from the vudu side of the bridge.

I don't know what a smokeping is, or what flood pinging would tell me?

[NA9D]

Re: Recommendations for Net Speed Testing

I don't know what a smokeping is, or what flood pinging would tell me?

A flood ping causes your computer to send out packets as quickly as possible. It floods your network with pings. Normal pings wait a specific amount of time between sending packets. The flood doesn't. The computer just sends as fast as it can and then records if it receives the response back or not. It's a very good test to see if a router or bridge is being flaky because the flood ping will reveal this by the device dropping large numbers of packets.