testing connection speeds

jimbus has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hola monksters!

I work for a small cellco and need to prove that our GPRS (cellular modem) connection speeds (to the internet) are what we say they are. I'd like to set up a client that will connect and access a site on our network, then use a server side program to measure and report down and upload speeds. We're buying a cheap, flash-base speed test product for field testers and remote management to use for testing because it does the job and it's pretty... which is important for one of the two listed groups... but I need something a bit more direct and perl-oriented to do the automated testing.

I'm thinking I can pretty easily figure the DL speed from the server. Just put some known sized images on a web page and hopefully there is some hooks in apache/mod_perl to see hwo much is downoaded at fixed intervals and then do the math, but I'm not sure how to figure upload speeds just yet. Can anyone give me advise on how to accomplish this or point me at something similar to use a an example?

Thanks,

JimB

--Jimbus aka Jim Babcock
Wireless Data Engineer and Geek Wannabe
jim-dot-babcock-at-usa-dot-com

Comment on testing connection speeds

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Re: testing connection speeds by roboticus (Chancellor) on Aug 29, 2006 at 15:24 UTC
You might consider using a simple FTP server on the server end. Then create a timestamp, download your reference file, and timestamp again--the download time is `(reference file size)/(timestamp2-timestamp1)`. The repeat the procedure, but upload the reference file this time. When done, delete the reference file. You'll probably want an FTP server anyway, and you can generate this client program simply with Net::FTP. --roboticus	[reply] [d/l]
Re: testing connection speeds by andyford (Curate) on Aug 29, 2006 at 16:33 UTC
Smokeping with the curl probe, combined with your known-size image concept, could give you a nice system with no development effort. Plus you get pretty graphs for free. Smokeping also has built-in alarming so you could get emails or something if your speeds drop to a certain level. andyford or non-Perl: Andy Ford	[reply]