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,

  1. Speedtest result also depends on the how "loaded" the test server (in above example, --server 5861 and --server 7456) also is.
  2. 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!