Command-line speed test?

[Chris Jones]

H.S. wrote:
> Chris Jones wrote:
>>> One thought I had was maybe there's some command line program I can use 
>>> to send a file to another server, and view the Kbps reading. Not sure if 
>>> this would be a true measurement, though. Help is appreciated.
>> scp ? That gives you a measure of the bandwidth at the command line. 
> 
> This may depend quite a bit on the machine on which it is being used 
> because it uses encryption, and encryption uses the CPU. 

I doubt on any recent machine the CPU will saturate due to encryption 
before the network bandwidth does (if it does, I doubt you have anything 
to worry about bandwidth wise ;) )

Actually, now I think about it compression might be an issue. If you 
have it enabled and transfer a lossy file, it might suggest you have a 
better connection than you do.

Moreover, I
> think one needs an account on the remote machine.

The OP seemed to suggest (to me at least) that he did.

> 
> Best bet would be to download a file from a website using wget.
> 
> Getting the upload speed is still a problem though. For this, one needs 
> to be able to upload a file to a remote mechine.

Someone else suggested iftop. I hadn't heard of this before but seems 
pretty useful.

Chris