How to Test your Broadband Speed from Linux Terminal

Testing your broadband internet speed from the Linux terminal is useful for network diagnostics and monitoring. The speedtest-cli tool provides a command-line interface to test download/upload speeds using speedtest.net servers.

Installing Python pip

First, install Python pip which is required for installing speedtest-cli ?

$ sudo apt-get install python-pip

The output will show package dependencies being installed ?

Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  libbs2b0 libopusfile0 libqmmp-misc libqmmpui0 libsidplayfp
  linux-headers-4.2.0-27 linux-headers-4.2.0-27-generic
  linux-image-4.2.0-27-generic linux-image-extra-4.2.0-27-generic
  linux-signed-image-4.2.0-27-generic php7.0-opcache
Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.
The following extra packages will be installed:
  python-chardet-whl python-colorama python-colorama-whl python-distlib
  python-distlib-whl python-html5lib python-html5lib-whl python-pip-whl
  python-requests-whl python-setuptools python-setuptools-whl python-six-whl
  python-urllib3-whl python-wheel
...............................................................................

Installing speedtest-cli

Install the speedtest-cli package using pip ?

$ sudo pip install speedtest-cli

The installation output confirms successful setup ?

Downloading/unpacking speedtest-cli
  Downloading speedtest_cli-0.3.4-py2.py3-none-any.whl
Installing collected packages: speedtest-cli
Successfully installed speedtest-cli
Cleaning up...

Running Speed Test

Execute the basic speed test command ?

$ speedtest-cli

The tool will automatically select the best server and display results ?

Retrieving speedtest.net configuration...
Retrieving speedtest.net server list...
Testing from Beam Telecom (183.82.104.71)...
Selecting best server based on latency...
Hosted by ACT Fibernet (Hyderabad) [10.33 km]: 2.75 ms
Testing download speed........................................
Download: 23.32 Mbit/s
Testing upload speed..................................................
Upload: 14.30 Mbit/s

Command Options

View all available options and parameters ?

$ speedtest-cli --help

Key Options

The help output shows useful command-line options ?

usage: speedtest-cli [-h] [--bytes] [--share] [--simple] [--list]
[--server SERVER] [--mini MINI] [--source SOURCE]
[--timeout TIMEOUT] [--secure] [--version]

Command line interface for testing internet bandwidth using speedtest.net.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
https://github.com/sivel/speedtest-cli

optional arguments:
-h, --help         show this help message and exit
--bytes            Display values in bytes instead of bits
--share            Generate and provide a URL to the speedtest.net share results image
--simple           Suppress verbose output, only show basic information
--list             Display a list of speedtest.net servers sorted by distance
--server SERVER    Specify a server ID to test against
--mini MINI        URL of the Speedtest Mini server
--source SOURCE    Source IP address to bind to
--timeout TIMEOUT  HTTP timeout in seconds. Default 10
--secure           Use HTTPS instead of HTTP when communicating with speedtest.net
--version          Show the version number and exit

Common Usage Examples

For simplified output without verbose details ?

$ speedtest-cli --simple

To list available servers by distance ?

$ speedtest-cli --list

To test against a specific server ?

$ speedtest-cli --server 1234

Conclusion

The speedtest-cli tool provides an efficient way to test internet speed from the Linux terminal. Use --simple for basic output or --list to choose specific servers for testing.