
This will help you have a more accurate check.

You need to do the test at least 5 times to have a reliable speed check or at least do it for a minute or two.

If your connection is 512KB and the place where you are downloading is 400KB, your max connection will be 400KB because it is the max for the server you are downloading from. The highest speed you will see is the maximum speed that your connection and the server's connection can offer. In the case of my link the speed is less than 200KB so if you have a higher speed, the server will be the bottleneck for you, not your actual speed. Of course there are several recommendations: Typing: wget would start to download the Ubu1.avi file and show at what speed it is downloading. To use it just point to a file in internet that is relatively bigger so that you can get a better estimate of it. That little tool tells me nicely what speed I have.
#RUN INTERNET SPEED TEST INSTALL#
Update in 2022: sudo apt install speedtest-cli Using pip install -user speedtest-cli gets you a version that is probably newer than the one available from your distribution's repositories. For Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial) and later use: sudo apt install speedtest-cli

Speedtest-cli is in Ubuntu repositories now. Hosted by FiberCloud, Inc (Seattle, WA) : 44.028 ms The short version is this: (no root required) curl -s | python. I created a blog post ( Measure Internet Connection Speed from the Linux Command Line) that goes into detail of downloading, installing and usage of it. I recommend the speedtest-cli tool for this.
