Speed Test – Ubuntu Terminal

1. How to check Internet Speed via Terminal in Linux or Ubuntu?

The easiest way to test internet speed in Ubuntu terminal is installing and using speedtest-cli. You can check the detailed information in this blog regarding downloading, installing and usage of it.

$ pip install speedtest-cli

$ speedtest-cli

If you don’t want to install speedtest-cli then also you can directly use the below command in terminal to test your internet speed.

curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sivel/speedtest-cli/master/speedtest.py | python -

Remember speedtest-cli is built on python, so please make sure python is already installed in system.

2. How do you properly test the network speed between two Linux servers using terminal ?

Best way to test the network speed between two servers using terminal is installing and using iperf . iperf is a client server arrangement in that you run it in server mode at one end and connect to its from another computer on the other side of the network. You can check the iperf documentation.

Iperf 3 is the latest version of iperf. You can install the iperf directly from ubuntu repository using below command.

sudo apt-get install iperf3

You can also install the latest iperf version 3.1.3 (As of writing this article) using below commands.

sudo apt-get remove iperf3 libiperf0
wget https://iperf.fr/download/ubuntu/libiperf0_3.1.3-1_amd64.deb
wget https://iperf.fr/download/ubuntu/iperf3_3.1.3-1_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i libiperf0_3.1.3-1_amd64.deb iperf3_3.1.3-1_amd64.deb
rm libiperf0_3.1.3-1_amd64.deb iperf3_3.1.3-1_amd64.deb

In order to use this you need to install this on both servers. Once installed run the below command in one server to start the iperf.

iperf3 -s -p 2324  #use -s to start as server and -p for port no. you can use any free port no for this. In this example i'm using 2324.

You will get output like this.

ubuntu@ip-XXX-XX-X-XXX:~$ iperf3 -s -p 2324
-----------------------------------------------------------
Server listening on 2324
-----------------------------------------------------------

Next from another server run below command to test the network speed between two servers.

iperf3 -c XXX.XX.X.XXX #network address of 1st server
i.e.
iperf3 -c 192.168.1.1

You will get output something like this

ubuntu@another-server:~$ iperf3 -c XXX.XX.X.XXX -p 2324
Connecting to host XXX.XX.X.XXX, port 2324
[  4] local XXX.XX.XX.XXX port 47740 connected to XXX.XX.X.XXX port 2324
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bandwidth       Retr  Cwnd
[  4]   0.00-1.00   sec   724 KBytes  5.93 Mbits/sec    0   38.2 KBytes
[  4]   1.00-2.00   sec  1.07 MBytes  9.00 Mbits/sec    0   56.6 KBytes
[  4]   2.00-3.00   sec  1.39 MBytes  11.6 Mbits/sec    0   66.5 KBytes
[  4]   3.00-4.00   sec  2.17 MBytes  18.2 Mbits/sec    0    156 KBytes
[  4]   4.00-5.00   sec  2.61 MBytes  21.9 Mbits/sec    0    259 KBytes
[  4]   5.00-6.00   sec  2.86 MBytes  24.0 Mbits/sec    0    375 KBytes
[  4]   6.00-7.00   sec  2.86 MBytes  24.0 Mbits/sec    0    491 KBytes
[  4]   7.00-8.00   sec  2.92 MBytes  24.5 Mbits/sec    0    609 KBytes
[  4]   8.00-9.00   sec  2.67 MBytes  22.4 Mbits/sec    0    725 KBytes
[  4]   9.00-10.00  sec  2.11 MBytes  17.7 Mbits/sec    0    836 KBytes
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bandwidth       Retr
[  4]   0.00-10.00  sec  21.4 MBytes  17.9 Mbits/sec    0             sender
[  4]   0.00-10.00  sec  18.6 MBytes  15.6 Mbits/sec                  receiver

iperf Done.