Network Benchmarking With Python

If you are looking to set up a quick and easy way to benchmark your network connection using Python look no further. Using the speedtest-cli package you can monitor your network usage around the clock.

To start we will by installing the speedtest package.

pip3 install speedtest

Then importing the packages we are using.

import speedtest
import time
import datetime

Following the initializing of the Speedtest Object we will start an infinite loop to collect the network data. On lines 11 and 12 we access the test object and call the download() and upload() methods to get the network speeds. These values, which are returned in bytes, are then appended to our CSV file with the timestamp of when it was taken.

test = speedtest.Speedtest()  # Initialize the test object

while True:

  test.get_best_server()  # Make sure the best server is being used

  for _ in range(12):  # Check for better server every two hours

    # Generate the data
    current_time = datetime.datetime.now()
    download_speed = test.download()
    upload_speed = test.upload()

    csv_line = ",".join(map(str, [current_time, download_speed, upload_speed])) + "\n"

    try:
      with open(DATA_PATH, "a") as fp:
        fp.write(csv_line)

    except:
      print("Oh No!")

    time.sleep(600)  # Rest for 10 minutes before next execution

You can see an example of this data on my GitHub. If you are interested in the project that required this data you can refer to my project article "Charter ISP - Slow Internet at 5pm or Delusion?"