Speedtest.net from Linux CLI
Monday, January 20. 2014
Speedtest.net has pretty much gained The-place-to-test-your-connection-speed -status. It's like Google for doing web searches. There simply is no real competition available.
Mr. Matt Martz (while throwing hot coals) did study their JavaScript-code enough to write their client-API with Python.
The installation into proper directory (recommended: /usr/local/bin/) with proper permissions is this simple:
wget -O speedtest-cli \ https://raw.github.com/sivel/speedtest-cli/master/speedtest_cli.py chmod +x speedtest-cli
The built-in automatic detection of nearest server does not work for me very well. Their recommended nearest server is not in the country I live (Finland), but on Russian side. The network connections over their border aren't that good and it simply does not yield reliable measurements. Not to worry, the CLI-version can do following:
speedtest_cli --list | fgrep Finland
864) Nebula Oy (Helsinki, Finland) [204.35 km]
Now that we know the server ID of a proper point, we can do:
speedtest_cli --server 864
It will yield:
Retrieving speedtest.net configuration...
Retrieving speedtest.net server list...
Testing from Finland Oyj (80.80.80.80)...
Hosted by Nebula Oy (Helsinki) [204.35 km]: 14.782 ms
Testing download speed........................................
Download: 92.69 Mbit/s
Testing upload speed..................................................
Upload: 4.32 Mbit/s
Nice!
Again, thanks Matt for sharing your work with all of us. 
Eugene on :
Also you can use speedtest_cli.py --list > list.txt
to print all servers to the file for future needs
Freezy on :
Jari Turkia on :