speedtest-cli-extras

The speedtest-cli-extras repository contains tools that enhance the speedtest-cli command-line interface to speedtest.net for benchmarking an internet connection.

Requirements

• The speedtest-csv tool requires:
  • a Bash shell or be called via bash speedtest-csv.
  • speedtest-cli which in turn requires Python.
  • that speedtest-cli is on the PATH or in the same directory as speedtest-csv.

Windows users: The MinGW project's MSYS package is an straightforward way to get Bash on Windows. Note, there is a speedtest-csv.bat Windows Batch wrapper script that calls the Bash script for you. In other words, if you call speedtest-csv at the Windows command prompt, it will work just as if you called it from Bash. Regardless, you do need Bash also on Windows.

speedtest-csv

The speedtest-csv tool calls speedtest-cli, captures its multi-line output, reformats it, adds time stamps, and outputs the benchmark statistics on a single well formatted line, e.g.

$ speedtest-csv --header
start	stop	from	from_ip	server	server_dist (km)	server_ping (ms)	download (Mbit/s)	upload (Mbit/s)	share_url
$ speedtest-csv
2016-04-04 16:35:01	2016-04-04 16:35:51	Comcast Cable	24.130.241.190	Fastmetrics Inc. (San Francisco, CA)	20.46	18.168	4.88	1.34	http://www.speedtest.net/result/5224137223.png

Collecting statistics over time

By running the above on a regular basis (e.g. once an hour) and appending the output to a TAB-delimited file one can gather statistics over time. To add meaningful column names to the top of this file, start off by adding a header:

$ speedtest-csv --header > speedtest_stats.tsv
# At 00:00 UTC
$ speedtest-csv >> speedtest_stats.tsv
# At 01:00 UTC
$ speedtest-csv >> speedtest_stats.tsv
# ...

$ less speedtest_stats.tsv
start	stop	from	from_ip	server	server_dist	server_ping	download	upload	share_url
2016-04-04 08:00:01	2016-04-04 08:01:01	Comcast Cable	24.130.241.190	Fastmetrics Inc. (San Francisco, CA)	20.46	18.168	4.88	1.34	http://www.speedtest.net/result/5224137223.png
2016-04-04 09:00:02	2016-04-04 09:00:42	Comcast Cable	24.130.241.190	Monkey Brains (San Francisco, CA)	21.36	16.723	3.40	0.21	http://www.speedtest.net/result/5224152283.png
[...]

If you're on Linux or macOS, you can use Cron jobs to automate the above.

Usage

$ speedtest-csv --help
speedtest-csv 2.0.1

Usage:
 speedtest-csv [options]

Options:
 --header          Display field names (only)

 --header-units    Units (ms, Mbit/s and km) are in header (default)
 --no-header-units Units are in the values
 --standardize     Standardize units and number formats (default)
 --no-standardize  Disable --standardize
 --share           Generate and provide a URL to the speedtest.net
                   share results image (default)
 --no-share        Disable --share

 --quote <str>     Quote fields using <str> (default: none)
 --sep <str>       Separate fields using <str> (default '\t')

 --help            This help
 --version         Display version

 --debug           Output extra debug information
 --last            Use most recent stats, if available
                   (avoids calling `speedtest-cli`)

Any other options are passed to speedtest-cli as is.

Example:
 speedtest-csv --header
 speedtest-csv

 # Defaults in speedtest-csv (<= 1.3.0):
 speedtest-csv --sep ';' --no-standardize --no-header-units

Installed dependencies:
 speedtest-cli 1.0.1 (https://github.com/sivel/speedtest-cli)
 python 2.7.12

Copyright: 2014-2017 Henrik Bengtsson
License: GPL (>= 2.1) (https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html)

Notes

As of Nov 2016, speedtest-cli (>= 1.0.0) itself supports outputting the results a single comma-separated value line. The format is slightly different from here, but the idea is very similar.