How to make your Raspberry Pi a network speed test tool

Summary

In this engaging video episode of Tech Bytes with Ron Nutter, viewers are guided through the exciting process of transforming a Raspberry Pi into a cost-effective network speed test tool. Ron explains the benefits of testing network speeds both inbound and outbound, and provides a step-by-step guide to setting up a Raspberry Pi with the necessary software components. The video also highlights four different tools—speedtest-cli, Fast, Docker, and iperf—that can be used for comprehensive network diagnostics, offering an effective solution without the need for costly equipment.

Highlights

• Transform your Raspberry Pi into an affordable network speed test tool. 🛠️
• Learn why testing both inbound and outbound speeds is crucial. 🔄
• Set up your Raspberry Pi with a few simple software components. 💾
• Master the use of Docker to manage multiple network speed tests. 🎛️
• Explore different tools to diagnose your network quickly and easily. 🚀

Key Takeaways

• You can turn your Raspberry Pi into a budget-friendly network speed test tool. 🤑
• Testing for both inbound and outbound speeds gives a full picture of your network health. 📈
• Raspberry Pi 4 is recommended, but a 3B model can suffice. 🥧
• Using Docker can help run multiple network tests efficiently. 🐋
• Several software options like speedtest-cli, Fast, and iperf are used for testing. ⚙️

Overview

Are you frustrated with your current network speeds and looking for an economical way to test them? Ron Nutter has you covered in this informative and engaging episode. He explains how a Raspberry Pi can double as a handy network speed test tool, saving you money and time while providing a detailed outlook on your network's performance. A must-watch for all savvy tech users!

The video delves into the importance of checking both inbound and outbound network speeds, providing a clearer understanding of potential bottlenecks and issues affecting connection quality. Ron simplifies the process and walks viewers through setting up their Raspberry Pi using speedtest-cli, Fast, Docker, and iperf, ensuring you're well-equipped to tackle any networking concern.

From setting up a basic Raspberry Pi system to understanding different tools for network analysis, Ron's presentation is thorough yet accessible for tech enthusiasts of all levels. With a focus on practical solutions and efficient processes, this video is a valuable resource for anyone wanting to enhance their home or office network functionality using a Raspberry Pi.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction In the introduction chapter, the speaker, Ron Nutter, addresses the need for effectively testing network speed to ensure optimal performance of network switches and devices. He introduces the concept of using a Raspberry Pi as a budget-friendly network speed test tool. The chapter sets the stage for the episode, promising viewers a guide on setting up their own network speed tester and emphasizes the practicality and utility of integrating such a tool into their smart home technology setup. Ron welcomes viewers to the tech-centric show 'Tech Bytes with Ron Nutter', hinting at the content's availability on Amazon.
• 00:30 - 01:30: Video Overview and Setup Requirements In this chapter titled 'Video Overview and Setup Requirements,' the narrator begins by encouraging listeners to visit their website 'techbyteswithronnutter.com' for more information related to the episode. They mention that there are affiliate links available in the description which, if used, may earn a small commission without affecting the purchase price for the buyer. The chapter also asks viewers to subscribe to the channel and enable notifications for future content. The video aims to teach viewers how to use a Raspberry Pi as a network speed test tool.
• 01:30 - 03:30: Testing Setup and Initial Configurations In this chapter, the importance of testing both inbound and outbound network speeds is discussed. The author outlines the necessary items for setting up these tests and describes an outbound speed test procedure. Additionally, the author demonstrates a local test, which is recommended for identifying network issues that could be easily addressed without involving extensive troubleshooting.
• 03:30 - 04:30: Speed Test Tools This chapter discusses the importance of using protocol analyzers, such as Wireshark, to identify and resolve network issues by testing inbound and outbound traffic from specific ports on a switch. The chapter suggests starting with a Raspberry Pi and emphasizes the utility of speed tests in isolating problems for quicker resolution.
• 04:30 - 08:30: Speed Test Tool Installation This chapter discusses the installation of a speed test tool, specifically suggesting the use of a Raspberry Pi, preferably version 4. Alternatively, a Raspberry Pi 3B can be used if available. It mentions the need for a 16 GB SD or microSD card. Three main software components are required, with a fourth being introduced later in the video as a hidden challenge. Overall, the chapter prepares the audience for the installation process with the resources and components needed.
• 08:30 - 15:00: Network Testing and Docker Setup The chapter titled 'Network Testing and Docker Setup' provides guidance on setting up networking and Docker configurations efficiently. The narrator emphasizes the importance of using available resources, such as SD cards, without needing to purchase additional items unless necessary. It includes advice on setting up and reserving an SD card for Docker settings. The narrator also highlights the importance of backing up your SD card once properly configured, to ensure it can be reused or restored when needed.
• 15:00 - 17:00: Testing with IPERF This chapter focuses on the process of testing using IPERF. It begins by quickly setting up the necessary components, mentioning the use of a Raspberry Pi image from January 2021. The narration continues as the micro SD card is inserted into the Raspberry Pi, which is powered on. It notes that the initial boot sequence has been completed successfully, and that the card has been resized accordingly. The chapter sets the stage for further steps in the testing process with IPERF.
• 17:00 - 18:00: Conclusion and Additional Resources This chapter focuses on finalizing preparations for applying software updates on a Raspberry Pi device. It addresses potential network connectivity issues, suggesting that users check their network cables and connections if certain lights on the Raspberry Pi are not indicating activity. The chapter concludes with a practical step of logging into the system and running the command 'sudo apt-get update' to initiate the update process.

How to make your Raspberry Pi a network speed test tool Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 not sure you're getting all the speed from your network switches or devices do you want a budget-friendly network speed test tool well stay tuned and i'm going to show you how to do this welcome to another edition of tech bytes with run nutter your home for all things relating to smart home technology in this episode we're going to talk about using a raspberry pi as a network speed test tool and trust me once you have this you're going to want to keep it hi i'm ron nutter and we're going to be working on this together this content is available as an amazon
• 00:30 - 01:00 flash briefing or podcast please go to techbyteswithronnutter.com for more information for any items mentioned in this episode there are affiliate links in the description if you click on these links i will get a small commission but that won't affect the price you pay for the item if you haven't already subscribed to the channel please click on subscribe now and enable notifications if this video helps you or provides value please click on that like button thumbs up now here's what we're going to be covering in this video and that's to use your raspberry pi as a network speed test tool and trust me once you've done
• 01:00 - 01:30 this you're going to want to keep it i'm going to talk about why you should test both ways and that's in and out we'll go over the required items then we'll talk about the outbound speed test and then we'll show you the local one that i think you're really going to like now running a network speed test is going to be something that's very handy to have because that's going to be an easy way for you to potentially see if there's a problem on the network that's going to be well i won't say easily correctable but you won't have to hold out the
• 01:30 - 02:00 protocol analyzer or wireshark to start to look for that kind of thing and i've had sometimes had to do that but it's important to test both inbound and outbound and when i say inbound outbound i'm talking from a particular port on the switch because it could be a port on the switch it may be the entire switch but this is where having the speed test will help you get the problem isolated and hopefully be a fairly quick and and simple fix well the first thing you're going to need is a raspberry pi and i would
• 02:00 - 02:30 suggest the raspberry pi 4. if you've got a 3b laying around this extra then by all means go ahead and use that one there will be a few other pieces to the pie there's going to be two different sorry three different software components at some point during the video i'll show you a fourth one but i'm not going to tell you where i i want to see how the others help you but i think the all said and done you're gonna like the options put before us you should be able to get by on a 16 gigabyte sd card or microsd card
• 02:30 - 03:00 certainly if you've got a 32 can't hurt you know if you don't have the bigger one then you should be able to get this to work on a 16 and probably even an eight bottom line is use what you got before you have to go out and buy something the first thing we've got to do is get an sd card set up and this is one that i'm going to reserve and if you've seen my other video and i'll should be pointing to it right about here about how to back these up because once you've got this one created even if you don't use it a lot or you need to reuse the sd card make a backup copy of this one so you can
• 03:00 - 03:30 quickly roll it out if you need to so let's go ahead and we will plug that in see it's already recognized it we will go with the raspberry pi image from january 2021 okay i've got the micro sd card in there we're powering it up now it's already gone through one boot sequence and that got the card resized so now when we come up here it should be
• 03:30 - 04:00 just another few seconds then we'll be able to go ahead and start applying the updates and if you get a message about can't resolve name or is having some sort of network problems but at this point you should have activity lights and a network speed light up on the raspberry pi if you don't you need to go look at your network cable or where it's connected into okay so we'll get logged in here and then we will do sudo apt get update
• 04:00 - 04:30 if i can type right okay we've got that done so now we'll do sudo apt get upgrade and make sure you put the dash y on the end because that
• 04:30 - 05:00 will save you a couple of keystrokes in the process of getting everything updated well now we've got all the updates supplied so let's find out what our active address is going to switch over to an ssh session and i forgot to do that the command if you put an ssh a file just a text file labeled ssh then that will tell you what you need to do so we just do an ifconfig okay so 10.0.1.234 but more importantly
• 05:00 - 05:30 since i forgot to do that then we're going to go into raspy config and we'll do system options hostname i'm not going to worry about at this point and we will do ssh yes we're going to enable it ssh is enabled we will exit there and just make sure i've got my address written down correctly you can always go into your internet router and get this attendant 0.1.234 all right so now what we're going to do
• 05:30 - 06:00 is we'll do a pseudo reboot and then i will switch over here once i move my keyboard back over put a usb switch in place to where it's not a problem and what did i not hit i didn't hit the button to move it back over 1.234 and we will go set the font size to something that's readable by humans and by now we should have a session just about up okay there we go it sees it so we'll log in as pi all right so now at this point what we
• 06:00 - 06:30 will do is we're going to get the first of our outbound speed tests up in place so we'll do a sudo apt install speed test dash cli okay as you can see it's ready to go so to get this to work all you do is just type speed test and
• 06:30 - 07:00 it's going to go out and pick something on its own and it's you're going to be as chatty as like the gooey one would be okay obviously i've got something using part of my network connection so this is
• 07:00 - 07:30 something your best to do this when your network is fairly quiet so if we want to cut down a little bit the chattiness we do speed test simple and that will cut down some of the chattings on the screen to where you can get just the basic information you're looking for although if you are wanting to like what site is testing against then you'll want to do the
• 07:30 - 08:00 first option that we selected so it came back just it was a pregnant pause now if you want to select a specific server then what you can do is do a speed test space dash dash list that will give you a list of servers and then you can do speed test dash dash server space and the server id from that first
• 08:00 - 08:30 list so your speed test list will look something like that so your server id is going to be those numbers right there on the left hand side and you can see there's a varying distance and if we scroll up here a little bit it gives doesn't give you a massive listing but it it does give you some options to test with because not all servers will respond back with the same results
• 08:30 - 09:00 now i'm going to show you another tool you can run from the raspberry pi and this one's got a little bit of a long string so i had to go bring up my notes so we can get this one moved over and that will pull the whole file down it's just a matter of how if it's in a repository or not if we just do an install okay that didn't take long so now we'll just type fast so that was a pretty short install and it's going out testing us against the specific host system so
• 09:00 - 09:30 we'll just see what it's showing us okay so it just shows you that based on the basic speed so it's a it's an outbound speed test but it's at least you know it gives you a kind of an idea of what you're looking at this part is an is a local test and we're going to use something called docker if you've seen some other videos you kind of know what you're getting ready to deal with here if you've not heard of docker before it's a way you can run multiple containers or apps if that's how you can uh want to
• 09:30 - 10:00 deal with it and what we're gonna do is we're gonna set this up so that we've got docker running so we can have multiple tests available on one raspberry pi so let's switch over here so it's going to take it up a few minutes but the other way is you need to be familiar with the command line because it can get a little overwhelming if you're not used to working in the command line so this is something that it just makes
• 10:00 - 10:30 it a little bit easier for you okay you can see it just completed it took a little while but i've got several things running on the network right now so that would explain it so what we want to do is since we're logging in as user pi we want to make sure that it's in the security group so that docker knows that it can be used for login now we're going to set up something called portainer and portainer is a
• 10:30 - 11:00 graphical way of dealing with the raspberry pi when you're running docker trust me it makes it a lot easier so we'll get that installed and if you're not familiar with seeing docker basically in this kind of a process with the instructions we've given it this is going to be pretty straightforward
• 11:00 - 11:30 and then if you when you get really comfortable with it there is a docker container called watchtower that can help keep a lot of things updated automatically not a big deal but that's something that you can look at when you're ready to move to that particular process okay so we've got that done so now we've got to get
• 11:30 - 12:00 portainer specified and it's going to come up on port 9000 and this is the easiest way to just let it go that way you can do all sorts of report manipulation but don't worry about that just yet you can deal with that when you're ready to go and then okay it's going to be
• 12:00 - 12:30 running right along here so it shouldn't take too long all right so now that appears to be all ready to go so let's double check our address again all right so this is going to be 10.0.1.234 now i'm going to exp i want to explain something to you
• 12:30 - 13:00 because of the way we set up the speed test container it's going to take port 80 and it's going to be redirecting to 8080 internally so that's going to make it a little bit easier for you so we'll just be able to go to web browser here and voila you can't make it any easier than that so
• 13:00 - 13:30 it's not going to be a fair test because i've got my intel nook and the raspberry pi on the same [Music] switch now don't worry if you don't get full capacity this is where you've got to get a feel for what's normal for a situation from the reading i've done now you notice we're getting almost full upload speed there appears to be
• 13:30 - 14:00 something in the raspberry pi 3-0 usb hardware that appears to explain some of this but as long as you're getting a a pretty high setting then based on the switch now if you're this is a gig switch i'm on if you're doing something let's say a 10 100 then obviously the numbers will be a little bit lower but at least it gives you an idea and this is where testing over multiple ports is good if you want to see how it's working over wireless then
• 14:00 - 14:30 go into raspi config turn up wireless unplug your ethernet you probably will have to reboot the raspberry pi because i don't know how well docker may respond to having the interface change that it's using but that's that's some experimentation you can do down the road well thanks to everybody who's stayed with the video until this point the process because now i'm going to tell you about another tool because i wanted to make sure i covered did a reasonable job at covering the different options available if you've been in networking at all or
• 14:30 - 15:00 been around someone has you may have heard of something called iperf and this is a two-step process we'll first have to install on the raspberry pi and bring up the iperf server so that we have something to test from the client so what we'll do is we'll switch over here to our trusty intel noc and we'll copy the line here where we're going to install iperf
• 15:00 - 15:30 okay that didn't take long now we've got to do is actually bring up the iperf server so what we will do is do iperf if i can spell iperf dash s okay now this is listing so now we'll switch over to the desktop and then we will go we'll change the client mode address
• 15:30 - 16:00 10.0.1.234 and if this works right it started the process now the raspberry pi is not showing it but we are testing well now you've seen not one not two not three but four tools now you may have to do a little bit of tweaking with iperf because it can be a little bit on the touchy side and it may not like working or right in being in conjunction
• 16:00 - 16:30 with docker but depending on how much way you want to go iperf alone is certainly an option because it can be tested both ways and the other three options i've shown you are certainly tools that at least it gives you a starting point on troubleshooting why the network is going to be a little bit so it could be a network board it could be the entire switch you might have extra traffic out there that if you run this at different times and you get wildly different results that's a good indication
• 16:30 - 17:00 that there's something else that you may have to dig just a little bit deeper if you're watching this on youtube you will see videos on the screen that are similar to the one you've just watched or other content that youtube thinks you might be interested in if this video helps you or provides value please click on that like button thumbs up if you haven't already subscribed to the channel please click on subscribe now and enable notifications we'll see you in the next episode thanks for watching