Your sensor supports several throughput tests, each having their own strengths. LibreSpeed is a simple and powerful open-source tool that is ideal for situations where you want to self-host a speed test, measure upload and download speeds on multiple sensors concurrently and mimic the user experience using standard web-based methods. In addition, there is also a public LibreSpeed service the sensors can test.
When this test is configured, the sensors act as clients and connect to a LibreSpeed server, as selected in the test configuration. This documentation does not cover how to setup your own LibreSpeed server. The sensor uses LibreSpeed client version 1.0.9.
To add this test to your sensors, go to Settings -> Service & App Tests. Next, make your selection of which groups of sensors and networks to assign the test to, then select Add Test
Fill in the following fields:
Service Category: Internal or External
Template Type: Custom
Test Template LibreSpeed
Title: Add a unique title for the test.
Server Selection: Use option Select Server to use a public LibreSpeed server. You can then use “auto selection” in the box below to let the test choose the server based on location or select a specific server from the dropdown list. Use the option Specify Server if you are hosting your own LibreSpeed server, then enter the parameters of your server. Several different tests can be set up to different servers.
Direction: Select one of both, neither, upload or download for the direction of the throughput test
Duration: Enter the length of the test in seconds
Payload Size: Enter the payload size to be uploaded in the upload test. Default 1024 KiB
Frequency: Specify how often the sensors should run the test
Secure: Use HTTPS instead of HTTP when communicating with LibreSpeed.org operated servers
Select Add to finish the test configuration.
Note: When testing your own librespeed server, it is recommended to specify the parameters of your server. The default options of the command line tool the sensor uses may produce low download speeds compared to the default options of the web browser. For example:
Download path: speedtest/backend/garbage.php
Upload Path: speedtest/backend/empty.php
Ping Path: speedtest/backend/empty.php
Get IP Path: speedtest/backend/getIP.php
Note: As is shown in the example values in the test config (image below), the paths must only be the paths, not the full URL.
In the service status page, after the test runs you will be able to see results for latency, jitter, upload throughput and download throughput. You will also be able to see the results per sensor from the sensor page.
Throughput test results can validate a minimum throughput. In comparison to a laptop, the results from a sensor may often be lower as the sensor does not have the same hardware capabilities (CPU, memory), different Wi-Fi drivers and chipsets (the sensor has two spatial streams), different Wi-Fi signal strengths/MCS rates, there may be different settings to perform the test (the sensors use a CLI tool or API where a web interface on a laptop may use different options) and functions such as the continuous packet capture on the sensor may impact the sensors’ ability to achieve the maximum throughput. However, the results from the sensor are good to validate a minimum throughput.