Linux / Unix: Test Internet Connection Speed From SSH Command

To test the internet connection speed from an SSH command line on a Linux or Unix system, you can use the wget or curl command to download a large file from a remote server and measure the download speed.

For example, to test the download speed using the wget command, you can use the following command:

wget -O /dev/null <url>

This will download the file at the specified <url> and discard the contents of the file using the /dev/null output file. The wget command will display the download speed and other statistics when the download is completed.

For example:

--2022-12-18 22:25:01--  http://mirror.centos.org/centos/8/isos/x86_64/CentOS-8.3.2011-x86_64-boot.iso
Resolving mirror.centos.org (mirror.centos.org)... 216.87.222.98
Connecting to mirror.centos.org (mirror.centos.org)|216.87.222.98|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 2107889664 (2.0G) [application/octet-stream]
Saving to: '/dev/null'

/dev/null                                                    100%[============================================================================================================>]   2.00G  17.4MB/s    in 1m 41s 

2022-12-18 22:26:43 (17.5 MB/s) - '/dev/null' saved [2107889664/2107889664]

You can also use the curl command to test the download speed. For example:

curl -s -w '%{speed_download}\n' -o /dev/null <url>

This will download the file at the specified <url> and discard the contents of the file using the /dev/null output file. The -s option disables the progress bar, the -w option specifies a format string to be printed after the download is completed, and the %{speed_download} format string displays the download speed in bytes per second.

For example:

17586.000

Keep in mind that the download speed may vary depending on the server, the network conditions, and other factors. You may want to repeat the test multiple times and take the average of the results to get a more accurate measurement.

You can also use other tools, such as speedtest-cli or iperf3, to test the internet connection speed more extensively or to measure other aspects of the network performance.