Speedtest CLI. Run speedtest on pfSense box

netblues

@johnpoz This is a home lab which I use for tests, and no, its not dialup :P
Obviously, a dual core n3050 can handle 50/5 speedtests at ease.

Getting back to the original speedtest@pf debate, consider sitting at the porch, and then the youngsters complain about games lagging.

Wifi is at limits, so instead of getting up and head to the home data center management room, one logs in to pf from phone. And since speed test from mobile wifi won't cut it, speedtest widget will tell you if you really need to get up.
Now I could run ssh terminal on android and use a bluetooth foldable keyboard and....

..
No.

ps If speedtest widget is not available on a default pf install, and one has to find and install it by reading the forum, then all is good. I doubt anyone will ever complain about speed. At least not from the widget. I even bet a few beers on that.

aln

@johnpoz your point of view is very narrow. There are different users out there with different needs.
Also if they came that far to use pfSense then probably not all of them are "fools".

RaidArray

@aln agree totally, but at the time it gave me what I needed so thought I'd share it with the community. didn't think it would divide the community in the way it did. bottom line in my book is that if you are intelligent enough to find the solution to a problem you have you should be intelligent enough to fault find it. I'm not impressed with the negativity coming through some of the posts on this thread.

RaidArray

@tman222 it won't work i looked at it, it's compiled for a newer version of freebsd than that which pfsense runs on, unless of course it's been updated over the past few months.

adamoutler

@johnpoz all of my Google WiFi access points run daily checks. They are intended to be routers. I can't understand why you would say a router is not intended to do such a thing.

Have you considered that the line you see and speeds from the speedtest.net are not actual, untampered results? I see some pretty serious QoS problems on my provider.

Also, if you run your own speedtest.net server (like ISPs) there are ways to fake the results, like increasing file sizes (more mb = assumed more MBps for some reason) and setting priorities to known servers.

johnpoz

@adamoutler said in Speedtest CLI. Run speedtest on pfSense box:

Google WiFi access points run daily checks. They are intended to be routers

No they are not.. Do you mean the router, the nodes are not routers...

They have their own built in speed test, and just had my son run it on his - guess what, it doesn't show his full speed 500Mbps he is suppose to get from his isp..

Is that isp, is that the google router test... Not sure - since he is just moving into the house.. And he has nothing that can actually test via wire gig.. So that will have to wait.

Those tests you posted or horrible!! 346 one day and then 3.5 the next? What speed do you actually pay for?

speeds from the speedtest.net are not actual

WTF does have to do if run from router or client behind router... Point has been made - you guys have fun... If you want to run speedtest from where ever... have at it... Point has been made.. I just tied of seeing why is pfsense speedtest not showing full speed... Which as been asked for YEARS... And this is only going to bring more of those..

You know how I know I am seeing full speed of what I pay for, I agree with you - speedtest nests can be misleading.. Is when I download files from my server in the NL.. .And see 60+ MBps which is my 500Mbps I pay for from isp..

adamoutler

@johnpoz point the finger where it belongs. Point it at the ISP. They aren't giving clients the actual results. They run their own servers and you should trust pFSense over an Speedtest.net which is paid for by ISPs.

johnpoz

Dude has Zero to do with the ISP... What do you not get that a router with X cpu designed to route packets might not be able to do 500/1000 as a client?

Have already show this multiiple times... Test to same freaking place ran on client shows full speed, test on pfsense does not will..

I'm done - have fun...

should trust pFSense over an Speedtest.net which is paid for by ISPs.

You clearly have no clue to what is even being discussed here to be honest..

adamoutler

@johnpoz if it can't do 500mbps as a client, then how can it possibly act as a client AND a server for packet filtering, suricata, or plain routing? This doesn't make sense unless something was seriously wrong with the libraries.

Exilewolf

Hi know this topic is old but I did not see any other updates elsewhere.

@aln Thank you so much for the work that you have done with this! While there is allot of blustering from people on here with their personal options I think this is a handy tool.

pfsence has many more features then just "routing" and the more information you have about network speeds from different points can be useful.

Personally I like this tool because I have a pfsence box that can handle the workload without issue. It is useful to me to see what speed my edge device is getting to the outside world. (without the fuss of going though the other hops in my internal network) It also helps me keep track of my crappy ISP.

That being said If you ever wanted to make an update.. I would love to see something that gave a history of over period of time that would allow you to see to trends etc.

Just an idea, not sure if anyone else would like this etc. But once again thank you!

EDIT : kind of like what @provels has done but without using a 3rd party etc.

provels

@Exilewolf
It was a fun exercise, but the results are so variable that I don't think the data is really worth the bits it's printed on. The big dip to the right was easily recognized without the data. It was a local outage. FWIW, this data was gathered from a server behind the FW and not just the FW. I have a 300/20 line.

chpalmer

This post is deleted!

andresmorago

@aln thanks so much for this. can you please clarify how can i bind an specific interface when running a test from your widget?

ipfftw

Haha.. this is a hilariously classic pfsense forums discussion. I love the ones where the supposedly knowledgeable "mod" tells people that they are "holding it wrong" because they cant conceive of people actually using their product how they want.

I too want to do a speedtest from the router. And yes gasp, i use old desktops that get upgraded as routers. And i have ever since my first 486 firewall in 1996, with dubble /netbsd that came on two floppies. What the hell else are you going to do with old desktops? stick em in a 2U server case and rack em up.

The reason i personally want to speed test from the firewall is that the level 1 techs at the ISP always want you to connect your own computer directly to the modem. I dont want to rewire my network and do that, so the next best device to run this sort of test on is the firewall itself. And its a good test to see if the problem is on the lan or wan side too.

I took my sons old computer, a i5-2400 and slapped that in to replace my q6600 core2 quad. And pfsense took it no problem and booted right up after i remapped one interface whoes name changed.
If I wanted an appliance, i would have got a mikrotik. But i prefer running on consumer hardware at home so that if something breaks its easy enough to find some parts in the parts bin to fix it. The only reason i really upgraded was because the core 2 quad mobo only had a 100mb interface and now i have a gig. Which was necessary for this speed upgrade here. I am trying to get 700/20 up that i am paying for now.

And i have used plenty of firewalls with large pricetags that pfsense runs circles around in terms of ease of use and setup. Running on consumer hardware isn't a flaw in the product, its one of its main strengths.

I installed the widget with the oneline command (thank you muchly), and find it about the same as speedtest/fast.com. I always prefer speedof.me as that cannot be faked. But it almost always skews quite a bit lower on most connections for some reason. On really nice connections i get what is advertised with the speedof.me test but rarely on home or small biz connections. Maybe last mile lag affects that test more.

Anyways got what i needed and it was a fun ride. The widget works and i am grateful for that. The pfsense community delivers once again!

`

aln

@andresmorago you will need to modify the widget and add the --source parameter to the cli command. Look it up in the speedtest-cli docs.

aln

@ipfftw I'm glad to hear you are using the widget

provels

Wonder if anyone's seeing this. When I run speedtest cli from my Windows box to pull the list of servers,

C:\Python27\python.exe C:\Python27\Lib\site-packages\speedtest.py --list > serverlist.txt

normally it returns a list including a half dozen that are within 30 miles or so of my location. My scheduled task is hard-coded to the server that returns the best ping (the server that is normally chosen when I run speedtest without choosing a specific server). Recently, though, the closest servers are over 700km away and the nearby servers are missing.

Retrieving speedtest.net configuration...
12733) WestPAnet, Inc. (Warren, PA, United States) [758.42 km]
 9276) ColoCrossing (Buffalo, NY, United States) [775.56 km]
31483) CreeperHost LTD (Buffalo, NY, United States) [775.56 km]
32993) Crowsnest Broadband LLC (Altoona, PA, United States) [849.74 km]
14233) Frontier (Rochester, NY, United States) [879.94 km]
14148) Rochester Institute of Technology (Rochester, NY, United States) [879.94 km]
 1239) Synoptek (Rochester, NY, United States) [879.94 km]
39474) University of Rochester (Rochester, NY, United States) [879.94 km]

And needless to say, my data is borked. Strange, when Irun the Windows client Ookla speedtest, it finds the servers w/o issue.
Anyone else see this?

alpharulez

@provels said in Speedtest CLI. Run speedtest on pfSense box:

@lastb0isct said in Speedtest CLI. Run speedtest on pfSense box:

Does anyone have the speedtest.py still? I can't seem to find it.

It comes with the package when you install it. SSH to your box and run:
pkg search speedtest

[2.4.4-RELEASE][root@fw.workgroup]/root: pkg search speedtest
py37-speedtest-cli-2.1.1       Command line interface for testing internet bandwidth
Then run
pkg install py37-speedtest-cli-2.1.1
Have fun!

Anyone seeing this error? I get this when i run any pkg command in this thread. Am on pfsense 2.4.5 on a 3100. Thanks

Shared object "libarchive.so.7" not found, required by "pkg"

daplumber

The binary package from Ookla is so much better than speedtest-cli which is ancient. But: no-source, deal I Guess.

See: https://www.speedtest.net/apps/cli
and:https://bintray.com/ookla/download/download_file?file_path=ookla-speedtest-1.0.0-freebsd.pkg

Obviously being a binary it's x86_64 only.

I don't suppose anyone's wrapping a page, or better widget, around speedtest? The above one already can output json.

aln

@daplumber look for my widget on this topic's history