Estimating Network Traffic Speed Using Regular File Utilities

Most of the time, if you want to estimate how fast your network is moving, you'll want to look at the output of tools like "netstat" and the like. Some file transfer programs, like "scp" are kind enough to print out the speed at which they're transferring a file to you while they're doing it.

But, sometimes you'll be stuck waiting on an file to make it all the way over to your machine using a protocol like "ftp." And, while it's possible to measure the speed of transfer in many different ways, I threw together this little script to let you know how fast your file is being "ftp"'ed to you by taking measure of the file being transferred, itself.

Check it out. It's kind of fun to see that there really is more than one way to skin a cat. In this case, you don't even need a skinner ;)

Note: Adjust the time variables to your liking. I wrote this for transfer of rather large files! The script, below, at the most basic level, measures the difference in the received file's size against the passing of time to determine approximately how fast your network is transferring that file.

And, yes, this is another experiment in "brute force scripting" (Getting results as fast as possible using scripting, even if it means all your t's aren't dotted ;), so you'll notice that the first output will be 0 and is accompanied by a message to the effect that measurement can't take place until more data is collected.





This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License

#!/bin/ksh

#
# 2007 - Mike Golvach - eggi@comcast.net
#
# Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License
#

last_total=0
first_time=1

while :
do
date
echo "KB PRIOR $last_total"
total=`du -sk|awk '{print $1}'`
echo "KB ACTUAL $total"
let new_total=${total}-$last_total
last_total=$total
echo "KB DIFF $new_total"
let hourly=${new_total}*60
echo "KB HOURLY $hourly"
let pre_average=`echo 2 k ${hourly} 1048576 / p |/usr/bin/dc|/usr/bin/sed 's/\.//'`
average=`echo $pre_average|/usr/bin/sed 's/^\(.*\)\(..\)$/\1\.\2/'`
netstat -ian|grep bge3|sed -n 1p|awk '{print "Packets In: " $5 " Packets Out: " $7}'
if [ $first_time -eq 1 ]
then
echo "Average incalculable until more data received"
first_time=0
else
echo "Averaging $average Gb per hour"
fi
echo
sleep 60
done

Enjoy!

, Mike

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