JimA.Fennessey

Hi everyone ... I'm part of a group of nonprofit agencies working in countries where Internet connections are very poor ... and very expensive. Also, the ISP vendors in those countries often promise more than they consistently deliver. So, there's a real need for a simple automatic tool that measures both download speed and upload speed, and puts those results in an online database where they can be retrieved and analyzed. I've been using testmy.net for this, and it's working well. We've already been able to document the performance patterns we see, something which previously was almost impossible. But, I've been asked if there's a way to make the scheduled tests run as a service in the background, so there's no need to open IE or keep it open. If that could be done, we could simplify the data collection, and could use the results more widely. I've thought of perhaps an app that runs as a service, and simply opens the URL for the testmy.net auto testing, and runs with no user interface ... Sounds fairly simple, but my skills as a programmer are not quite up to this. Any thoughts? Thanks in advance! Jim

Thanks, everyone, for the replies, and especially CA3LE for the CSV feature. It works well, and helps me make better use of the numbers. I've revised my earlier XLS macro to handle the new CSV files, and am attaching it to this post. Looking forward to more refinements, especially something that could run the scheduled tests as a service so that they could be automated without logging anyone one.

Two items: First, I've been seeking a way to extract the results from the online database, so I can run analyses on them. What I've done so far is highlight the 250 latest results, copy them to the clipboard, and then paste them into Excel. Some manipulation is then needed to get things usable, but I've put together an XLS macro that does a nice job of cleaning things up and averaging the upload and download results in a pivot table. Life would be simpler if I had a button on the screen to dump the results to a CSV file, and if the actual speeds were outputted as numeric instead of as strings. I'm happy to share the Excel macro if anyone has a use for it ... I've attached it here. The only trick is to highlight the line "Showing .." as well as the actual results, since the macro deletes that "showing" line. (The attached .doc file refers to a slightly earlier edition of the macro, but shows how to highlight the results.) Second, I'm wondering if there's a more convenient way to run the tests on a schedule, perhaps as an executable that can be scheduled with the OS scheduler? I'm fairly new to the community (a couple of months), but it's a great service and a great group of activists. Looking forward to more good stuff ahead! Jim