Surely if everyone reasoned badly like you, everything would be blocked due to continuous tests that consume bandwidth for nothing.Is there another way to change internet access routes automatically when the bandwidth on one of the routes is dropping?
I don't know if that is still true, but it appears that at one time most bandwidth on Starlink was used by people doing speedtests all the time...Surely if everyone reasoned badly like you, everything would be blocked due to continuous tests that consume bandwidth for nothing.
The problem is widespread, as it is for me: in the evening when they return,I don't know if that is still true, but it appears that at one time most bandwidth on Starlink was used by people doing speedtests all the time...
So, how to change internet access routes automatically when the bandwidth on one of the routes is dropping?You like copy & paste?Surely if everyone reasoned badly like you, everything would be blocked due to continuous tests that consume bandwidth for nothing.Is there another way to change internet access routes automatically when the bandwidth on one of the routes is dropping?
So, how to change internet access routes automatically when the bandwidth on one of the routes is dropping?Surely if everyone reasoned badly like you, everything would be blocked due to continuous tests that consume bandwidth for nothing.
While uplink to provider A is in use, running speed test a) interferes with normal traffic and b) is inconclusive because normal traffic interferes with speedtest.When the bandwidth that I subscribe to from A drops to 1Mbps, how can I make the internet access route switch to B automatically other than using the speedtest results as a parameter?
That's the problem, in my country there are very rarely internet providers that provide this, not even being honest if bandwidth drops do occur. In such conditions speedtest becomes a faster and more honest solution.You will have to ask your provider A how you can query the state of that bandwidth limitation.
E.g. they provide you with a web URL that you can fetch and that returns a simple status, not some large HTML page.
Now of course, you depend on if your provider makes that available in a usable form.
I have done it before. Unfortunately, there are many drawbacks of this method. WAN interface monitoring cannot show actual results whether bandwidth is dropping or not. Likewise with ping, whether the bandwidth conditions are good or drop, the ping results are both good.While uplink to provider A is in use, running speed test a) interferes with normal traffic and b) is inconclusive because normal traffic interferes with speedtest.When the bandwidth that I subscribe to from A drops to 1Mbps, how can I make the internet access route switch to B automatically other than using the speedtest results as a parameter?
So again, speedtest is really not the tool for routine assessment of network state.
Better would be to run monitor command on WAN interface and combine it with ping results ... if ping round trip time increases above acceptable threshold (e.g. twice the normal one) and interface monitoring shows speeds far below subscribed/acceptable, then it's time to switch (note that RTT can increase due to congestion in any of directions). Ping latency is a "poor man's" way of determining if actual throughput is limited by some bottleneck (when data is buffered on any of sides, RTT will increase ... by how much depends on buffer sizes but since many vendors go the buffer bloat to get maximum throughput as high as possible, this also makes maximum latency quite a bit higher) or the throughput is low due to low demand. The observed throughput (in those moments with increased RTT) will show you how narrow the bottleneck is.
And all of the above without affecting normal traffic by executing silly tests.
LOL, so true. ...but you see how long your waiting at traffic lights. But overall this seems like a queue management problem – you can add some "express lanes through the city" that help, but not everyone can use them.It's like driving a car at full speed inside a city, just for check if it can still reach the max speed...
Well also true. I still like to be able to easily fail a route if latency is high, since icmp is can safely measured (unlike a "speedtest" which is just a bad idea if already congested). The simple "check-gateway=ping" is rather limited, and part of the issue at hand.But it remains a dream... too many hurdles to overcome.
You can't be sure but if buffers are not filling and thus ping is not increasing, it's pretty safe to assume that bandwidth is higher than required throughput at that particular moment. Meaning that there is no problem (even if bandwidth dropped below subscribed).How do I know if my bandwidth is dropping or not if WAN utilization is low and ping is good?
That's the problem, internet bandwidth is dropping while the ping results don't always show an increase in latency. The less frequently the buffer fills, the more difficult it is to see an increase in latency.LOL, so true. ...but you see how long your waiting at traffic lights. But overall this seems like a queue management problem – you can add some "express lanes through the city" that help, but not everyone can use them.It's like driving a car at full speed inside a city, just for check if it can still reach the max speed...
The thing you can do is watch latency as a proxy for bandwidth, not perfect however. For HTTP, and TCP generally, speed is pretty well correlated with latency.
The new "http" and "icmp" tests in /tool/netwatch might help here. Still ain't going to tell you top speed.
There is also the older /tool/ping-speed — its guess at speed is plain wrong – but the difference between multiple runs is meaningful, since it uses latency as a proxy.
In either case, if you run some "real speedtests"... when latency is high and low (as measured by /tool/netwatch "icmp" check, or the "fake speeds" of /tool/ping-speed) – you can see how they correlated yourself. high ping time == lower speedtests
Well also true. I still like to be able to easily fail a route if latency is high, since icmp is can safely measured (unlike a "speedtest" which is just a bad idea if already congested). The simple "check-gateway=ping" is rather limited, and part of the issue at hand.But it remains a dream... too many hurdles to overcome.
If you have multiple routes, and one of them is >500ms, that's just not going to very usable in most cases. See: viewtopic.php?t=192844 – no panacea but that be progress.
When your links are always saturated (i.e. you are one of those "WISP" companies that re-sell 20 Mbps of bandwidth to 100 customers), you can watch the actual rate of the link and see if it drops below some normal value.Back to the question, "how do you change internet access routes automatically if bandwidth is dropping? (without using speedtest as a parameter).
That's right, that's why right now what I'm doing is monitoring the WAN interface, if the utilization seems low then run a speedtest, not a ping test.When your links are always saturated (i.e. you are one of those "WISP" companies that re-sell 20 Mbps of bandwidth to 100 customers), you can watch the actual rate of the link and see if it drops below some normal value.Back to the question, "how do you change internet access routes automatically if bandwidth is dropping? (without using speedtest as a parameter).
When this is not the situation, i.e. the link rate is often below what you would call "dropped bandwidth", the answer probably is that it isn't possible.
But when your ISP drops your bandwidth when they think you use too much data ("fair use policy" or "data cap"), would you not cause a feed-forward loop where you cause the problem in the first place by pumping useless data (speedtest) over the line?That's right, that's why right now what I'm doing is monitoring the WAN interface, if the utilization seems low then run a speedtest
Is easy: do not do speed tests. The problem appear only when you do that.please explain how you would solve this.
Let's assume the internet provider doesn't apply a fair usage policy, and I also don't speedtest too often.But when your ISP drops your bandwidth when they think you use too much data ("fair use policy" or "data cap"), would you not cause a feed-forward loop where you cause the problem in the first place by pumping useless data (speedtest) over the line?That's right, that's why right now what I'm doing is monitoring the WAN interface, if the utilization seems low then run a speedtest
It looks the same as speedtest, but done manually by humansIt seems better to monitor the effective speed of individual TCP sessions that you know to be uploads/downloads to/from fast servers. E.g. users sending e-mail or cloud files.
Is it not clear enough that I am mentioning "automatically" in my question?Is easy: do not do speed tests. The problem appear only when you do that.please explain how you would solve this.
If the problem is another service that do not work, I check that service instead do useless speedtesting for kids.
Some ISP put on the max precedence speedtesting, other drop useless repetitive testing.
Probably your line is ok, is the speedtest service that is blocked, before your play with it too often.
It's hard to translate, I'm not English, but let's put it this way:If it's just manual, you don't need a network engineer, turn off the modem whose bandwidth drops, then the problem is solved.
Why is the question going to Netflix? Disney+ ? If the problem is only specific to a particular application then the solution is not speedtest or ping.It's hard to translate, I'm not English, but let's put it this way:
If for some reason independent of the ISP, netflix doesn't work, do a speedtest?
Or maybe the most logical thing is to open something else like Disney+???
(names and brands, examples only)
This happens to the internet bandwidth, not the specific application. Take a look at the screenshots of my speedtest results.How can you tell when there is no bandwidth in a connection, if you don't test it continuously, incessantly, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week?
If the solution is just turn off the modem. It's easy like you said but we will keep doing boring things again and again in our life.Doing it "automatically" occasionally does nothing but create interruptions when maybe the bandwidth is needed, also in your own connection,
and if I were the provider, who sees that from what you wrote, the lines are a pittance, I'd be the first to block the speedtests so as not to break the f–k to the others who pay.
Do you have access the ISP routers that are your next-hops? If not, then answer is NO.Is there really no automatic solution to switch internet access routes when the bandwidth on the main route is dropped?
Yes, from this discussion I have summarized 3 possible ways that can be done to change routes when bandwidth drops.Do you have access the ISP routers that are your next-hops? If not, then answer is NO.Is there really no automatic solution to switch internet access routes when the bandwidth on the main route is dropped?
You can focus on what gets prioritize, so those go out first. Traffic can go into the "right" queues "automatically" on your end, for your needs. But the measurement for that is does the application/website/etc work at an acceptable level. Not a HTTP speedtest.
You decided to misinterpret what I wrote ... and the problem with screenshots you posted is that speedtest does latency test before performing (uni-directional) speed tests. If upstream link is not congested during latency test, then latency times for sure won't show link degradation. So yes, I agree, simple ping times can't detect link bandwidth degradation if it's (current) capacity is not used entirely. But it seems you like to bother about bottlenecks which don't really degrade performance.2. Using observation of the WAN interface and ping time although not always accurate (see the example of my speedtest results, I guarantee that if the parameters are ping time/latency, anything related to ping then failover will never succeed).
Let's say there is a higher ping time, but the utilization of the WAN link is low, how do you conclude that the WAN link got reduced or not?So yes, I agree, simple ping times can't detect link bandwidth degradation if it's (current) capacity is not used entirely.2. Using observation of the WAN interface and ping time although not always accurate (see the example of my speedtest results, I guarantee that if the parameters are ping time/latency, anything related to ping then failover will never succeed).
I'll repeat: observe ping times and if they get higher than usual, observe actual throughput via WAN interface. If throughput via WAN interface is lower than expected/subscribed (and that's during higher ping times!), then WAN link bandwidth got reduced.
Is it true? In numerous tests in my case it turned out that monitoring ping time and WAN links showed very low accuracy, while using speedtest on my network to automate internet access route switching based on bandwidth showed much more accurate results.Why not? because http speed tests are for end users, for humans. They want to have a site where they can confirm that their nice new 1Gbps internet connection indeed transfers data that fast.
They are not for use in scripts. When you want to measure the speed of your line in some script, you don't use a http speed test. You use the bandwidth test tool, you use iperf3, whatever. Not a http speed test.
You make senseless mixed talk....using speedtest on my network...
...automate internet access route switching based on bandwidth...
...some people prefer to do the boring manual way all their lives...
...waiting for the >>>customer<<< to get angry and then act
...for me and some other people...
...other people's opinions...
...my case using speedtest...
...for use in your network...
...I offer another solution... ...my network...
My home and my office1) Is it just your home or your office?
Yes2) Do you have several clients to whom you supply the connection which you in turn take from two other connections, one 10M and one 5M and that's it?
No, I have never said or behaved like that. That's what you think, I don't think so.3) Are you an ISP? If not, don't speak as a supposed "customer connoisseur"™
I never said that, I said "when the WAN link utilization is low". Those are two different things.4) It makes no sense to say that you start the test when there is a slowdown, because otherwise it means that you already know when it slows down.