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Problem

A friend asked if ~20Mbps download / ~15Mbps upload / ~40 ping is okay for online video teaching. I said absolutely.

But the speed test used only measured these statistics for approximately a 10-20 second period - what if the internet is unstable frequently throughout any given longer period (for example, it may drop out for short periods ~10 seconds at a time, and this may happen many times per hour).

Is there any web or desktop based software, or some python script used for measuring an internet connection's stability over some period >10 minutes (ideally an hour or more)?

Note

In case this is an A/B problem, the ultimate goal is to determine with some confidence whether a particular internet connection is going to be suitable for important video conferencing.

Scrappy solution

What I have right now is an R script that I can run periodically (e.g. 1 time per minute) for perhaps a few hours, then note any outages. E.g.

library(speedtest)
speedtest::spd_download_test(speedtest::spd_best_servers())$mean

But this solution is imperfect and the code not optimised for the particular metric I am trying to measure (stability)

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stevec
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1 Answers1

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Although I may not able to respond directly to your situation, below link is the results of my own internet speed monitoring that might be informative. I did a simple speed monitoring at home during Covid 19 period through Python (library of Speed test-CLI). My newly-installed internet package is said to provide 100 Mbps of speed through fiber-optic cable network system.

So, I decided to have a check on the performance using laptop & smartphone for three days (note that the sampling rate and unit were different in each day). The main purpose of my attempt was to test the WiFi network capability and stability.

From the monitoring, I conclude myself the followings: (a) Using different devices, namely WiFi adapters, will give different speeds [as can be seen in the 1st page of pdf, my mobile speed was way faster]; (b) it is crucial to keep the software and hardware consistently same; (c) The internet can provide me enough service from daytime to nighttime [overall is greater than the threshold of 20 Mbps]. Unless we are going to watch those high quality-demanding stuffs (4k videos), the current situation is good to serve eight family members.

Hopefully this piece of information can be helpful to you. Real-time internet speed monitoring

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