Slow speed result with SpeedTest test
SpeedTest selects your speed-test server based on your VPS or dedicated servers IP address GeoLocation.
At times, your VPSes physical location may NOT match with the GeoLocation (which is set on the IP address), in these cases, SpeedTest auto selects a server that may be far away from your existing VPSes physical location, which then results in a wrong/incorrect result.
Installing SpeedTest CLI on your Linux Server
Speedtest now has official apps CLI available now for running speedtests [https://www.speedtest.net/apps/cli]
CentOS / Alma Linux / RockyLinux
For installation on CentOS or Alma Linux or RockyLinux, run the following command,
curl -s https://install.speedtest.net/app/cli/install.rpm.sh | sudo bash
sudo yum install speedtest
Ubuntu / Debian
For installation on Ubuntu or Debian, run the following command,
sudo apt-get install curl
curl -s https://install.speedtest.net/app/cli/install.deb.sh | sudo bash
sudo apt-get install speedtest
In this example,
VPS "LA" is located in Los Angeles, California, but when looking up in SpeedTest for servers in Los Angeles, we see the distance as 3800+ KM! This is due to the GeoLocation of the VPSes IP address.
If your VPS / Server IP is not GeoLocated correctly to the physical location of the service, we can change the IP for free to another IP which is GeoLocated correctly. GeoLocation of the VPS / Server IP does NOT affect its speed or its ping in reality!
Next, we run a test with server #18857,
[root@lax ~]# speedtest --server-id=18857
Speedtest by Ookla
Server: BAI Connect - Los Angeles, CA (id = 18857)
ISP: QuadraNet
Latency: 0.44 ms (0.08 ms jitter)
Download: 937.12 Mbps (data used: 422.4 MB )
Upload: 936.80 Mbps (data used: 421.3 MB )
and with server #19230,
[root@LA71 ~]# speedtest --server-id=19230
Speedtest by Ookla
Server: Hivelocity - Los Angeles, CA (id = 19230)
ISP: QuadraNet
Latency: 0.41 ms (2.73 ms jitter)
Download: 874.93 Mbps (data used: 761.3 MB )
Upload: 798.71 Mbps (data used: 676.9 MB )
Packet Loss: 0.0%
Now, in both these cases with speedtest, we get around 930 - 790 Mbps.
Next, Let's run a wget based CacheFly speedtest file, here, we notice 94.4 MB/s (940 Mbps!),
[root@la ~]# wget -O /dev/null http://cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test
--2018-02-06 11:22:46-- http://cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test
Resolving cachefly.cachefly.net (cachefly.cachefly.net)... 205.234.175.175
Connecting to cachefly.cachefly.net (cachefly.cachefly.net)|205.234.175.175|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 104857600 (100M) [application/octet-stream]
Saving to: ‘/dev/null’
100%[=================================>] 104,857,600 94.4MB/s in 1.1s
2018-02-06 11:22:47 (94.4 MB/s) - ‘/dev/null’ saved [104857600/104857600]
How to find speedtest servers in your VPSes location:
With earlier versions of speedtest-cli, it was possible to use a simple grep to find a list of servers for a certain region, but this is slightly different in the newer official SpeedTest CLI app,
We've listed a few server IDs for each region we provide our services out of, these IDs can be used to then apply into the below command,
speedtest --server-id=<Server-ID>
Replace <Server-ID>
with the ID
from the list below.
For example,
[root@lax ~]# speedtest --server-id=18857
Speedtest by Ookla
Server: BAI Connect - Los Angeles, CA (id = 18857)
ISP: QuadraNet
Latency: 0.44 ms (0.08 ms jitter)
Download: 937.12 Mbps (data used: 422.4 MB )
Upload: 936.80 Mbps (data used: 421.3 MB )
Speedtest servers for Los Angeles, California, USA
ID Name Location Country
==============================================================================
14236 Frontier Los Angeles, CA United States
12191 Nitel Los Angeles, CA United States
17527 Race Communications Los Angeles, CA United States
17249 Wiline Networks Los Angeles, CA United States
16974 Spectrum Los Angeles, CA United States
7190 Sharktech Inc. Los Angeles, CA United States
21001 5x5 Telecom Los Angeles, CA United States
18857 BAI Connect Los Angeles, CA United States
22736 Inyo Networks Inc Los Angeles, CA United States
19230 Hivelocity Los Angeles, CA United States
Speedtest servers for Atlanta, Georgia, USA
ID Name Location Country
==============================================================================
32032 Georgia State University Atlanta, GA United States
5296 Pavlov Media Atlanta, GA United States
8707 Sparklight Atlanta, GA United States
17387 Windstream Atlanta, GA United States
36684 Georgia Institute of Technology Atlanta, GA United States
8169 Whitesky Communications LLC Atlanta, GA United States
15853 Uniti Fiber Atlanta, GA United States
37808 Comcast Atlanta, GA United States
37565 Netprotect Atlanta, GA United States
Speedtest servers for Frankfurt, Germany
ID Name Location Country
==============================================================================
23712 avrx Nürnberg Germany
37492 Melbicom Frankfurt Germany
37567 Netprotect Frankfurt Germany
37337 IceNox GmbH Frankfurt Germany
33534 HessenKom GmbH & Co. KG Frankfurt Germany
37780 Hunterz-IT_DE Frankfurt am Main Germany
37748 ropa GmbH & Co. KG Frankfurt Germany
Speedtest servers for Amsterdam, The Netherlands
ID Name Location Country
==============================================================================
28922 PhoenixNAP Global IT Services Amsterdam Netherlands
20005 Serverius Connectivity Amsterdam Netherlands
37566 Netprotect Amsterdam The Netherlands
36998 RETN Amsterdam Netherlands
41000 Voiped Telecom Amsterdam Netherlands
46337 Max16K - Netzwerk Amsterdam Netherlands
30847 Claranet Benelux B.V. Amsterdam Netherlands
26996 KPN Amsterdam Netherlands
23094 31173 Services AB Amsterdam Netherlands
13218 XS4ALL Internet BV Amsterdam Netherlands
With this we can now conclude the following,
- Speedtest result also depends on the how "loaded" the test server (in above example, --server 5861 and --server 7456) also is.
- CacheFly test must be done to confirm speed as well to see if any issues exist
If you get LOW speeds with CacheFly test + SpeedTest test, please contact us right away and we will fix the issue!