Comment by Etheryte

3 years ago

Neat, I was not aware of `networkQuality`. A good replacement for opening up Speedtest or whatnot when you just want to figure out if the network is slow or something else is up.

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Etheryte

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zgluck  3 years ago

I can't find any (official) documentation on how it measures the speed. Against which target?

Edit: Found https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-check-your-macs... which says:

"The networkquality tool uses Apple’s CDN (https://mensura.cdn-apple.com/api/v1/gm/config) as a target"

The contents of this file (for me):

  { "version": 1,
    "test_endpoint": "sesto4-edge-bx-021.aaplimg.com",
    "urls": {
        "small_https_download_url": "https://mensura.cdn-apple.com/api/v1/gm/small",
        "large_https_download_url": "https://mensura.cdn-apple.com/api/v1/gm/large",
        "https_upload_url": "https://mensura.cdn-apple.com/api/v1/gm/slurp",
        "small_download_url": "https://mensura.cdn-apple.com/api/v1/gm/small",
        "large_download_url": "https://mensura.cdn-apple.com/api/v1/gm/large",
        "upload_url": "https://mensura.cdn-apple.com/api/v1/gm/slurp"
     }
  }

  • varenc  3 years ago

    It’s a new proposed standard that’s gaining support. People are building alternative party implementations for it: https://github.com/network-quality/goresponsiveness

    Try running it with `-s` to see if you get speed tests that resemble what you expect. The idea is that maxing out both links at once is a better measure of network quality than sequence speed tests. Also it’s new RTT metric is key.

  • Etheryte  3 years ago

    I find solace in the fact that even at large companies, there's still enough whimsy to name your upload endpoint slurp.

gargs  3 years ago

It seems to grossly underestimate my upload bandwidth!

  • varenc  3 years ago

    It tests your bandwidth while fully saturating your upload AND your download. If maxing out your upload has a huge impact on your download (like, a 70% drop), then that’s probably a sign you could tweak your network for better flow control.

    That’s sort of the idea of `networkQuality`. It’s a new idea for how to measure that’s different from the standard speed test.

    Through if you run it with the `-s` flag it’ll test them sequentially.

    • gargs  3 years ago

      In my case, it appears that maximizing my download has a huge impact on my upload as well, which makes sense from a TCP/IP point of view. In this case, do you mean the ISP's flow control?

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