sgbotsford

Interesting that the concept is 'which computer' and not 'which connection' The labels are arbitrary, but it reflects a difference in mindset. When I was sysadmin at a dot com company, we had dual connections -- fiber into the building from Shaw Cable -- and a T1 connection from Telus. The company felt that internet was important enough that we had dual connections. We chose Telus as the backup company becuase they had their own fiber network throughout western Canada, so it it was unlikely that any glitch could take out both connections to head office in Seattle. If it did it meant likely that all of Western Canada (at least) was dark. Our service level agreement stated that we got a month of free service for any interuption longer than two hours. Mind you, we paid for it too. Couple thousand bucks a month. Anyway, I made all my tests from my desktop, changing the connection in use by changing the default router. (We assigned routers by DHCP. This meant that the loss of the main connection meant ONE edit in ONE file, and either rebooting, (most users) or restarting the network stack on your desktop. (developers & some power users.) (Servers did not have access to or from the world.) The backup router was just an old PC running OpenBSD. Most of the time it just sat there, every 5 minutes sending 3 ping packets to a list of servers to see if the connection was workable, and sending me a notification if anything was amiss. I suppose that some of you with fast connections taht the computer might be the choke point. I dream of that. I just paid for an upgrade from 1 Mb/s capped at 24 MB/hour to 5 Mb/s capped at 30 GB/month + FAP on the top 10% of users when the network gets congested. ($60/month for the first year. 85 thereafter) Which is why I intend running 4 times daily tests forever. If I'm paying so much for so little, I want a way to prove how badly they have been screwing around with me.

Ok. Where do I name my connection? I see that I can filter results depending on words like office home, etc, but I I don't see a place to actually set my connection and give it a name. Back for more coffee. Need to wake up.

It would be nice if the graph had a proper time axis on it. This way if you are testing a satellite link with several tests back to back, followed by several hours of nothing, they would show up properly. It also allows you to pick out the best times to run large downloads. Big key feature however is so taht you can give the small claims court a printout showing how screwed up your ISP is at meeting the terms of your agreement. Yeah, I could do it myself in excel, but having the online version makes it easy to show a general trend, and gives it more credibility. Having vertical lines for days, weekends shaded in a somewhat different color, and dates running on the bottom for long range plots.

Good point. But what I meant was that the package speed is associated with the connection name -- that way it doesn't have to be entered as an option when you submit results. Having a rate associated with a connection name would fill in the rate for a large number of backlogged tests. Under normal circumstances once you entered a speed you couldn't change it. If you changed plans, you create a new connection a new name. This way the history of the database would remain useful. Internally the database keeps connection names/speeds as username.connection_name, so it wont matter if both you and I have a connection called xplornet-1mbs During the transition you would be asked something like "you have records for this connection dating back to X. Should all of these be given this nominal speed?

Yet another idea for you: Ability to download test results as either an excel spread sheet, or a CSV file.

I'd like a command line version of this. Otherwise I'll close the window by mistake, and then I won't get results, because it won't be running. Ideally I'd something like: testmynet -u {string} username (required) -c {string} connection name (required) -l {pathname} path/to/logfile -n {number} number of times to run -i {time unit } interval between runs. Interval is from the END of the previous run. -j {time unit} jitter. Random variation in when to run. -min {number} mininum data size -max {number} maximum data size -auto base size on history. -s servername -d {direction: up, down, both} The -j flag allows things like this: testmynet -i 2:00 -j 0:30 this waits a random amount of time up to 30 minutes before running the test. If unspecified, j should default to something like 1/4 of the interval. This will prevent 5000 cron jobs all over the world hitting you at exactly 11 a.m. If -i is set to zero, and n > 1 the tests will be back to back, but there is an implied -j of 1 minute per megabyte before the tests start. The server can tell the client. "Busy now. Try in 5" and the client will wait 5 minutes and try again. If you decide to do this, you also need some protection. There are two risks: 1. Someone sets this up, and ignores it, and it runs whenever their machine is on. This is a mild waste of resources, except it's helping you build your database. 2. Some ISP who your records have really pissed off launches a DoS attack on you. I would suggest something like this: Set up dns records for tmn1.testmy.net tmn2.testmy.net qfmp.testmy.net If you get hammered too hard, change the server names, or disable that user. By having a yearly server name change and announcing it on your site, you filter out risk #1. I would also have a firewall setup that would allow me to block connections from an abusive player at the first SYN packet. pf, under any of the BSD unixes can be set up to do this. An additional feature to prevent abuse. Require the client to perform a complex calculation. This should be time consuming enough that it becomes unreasonable to run multiple copies of the client program. testmynetclient: I want to run a test. server:Very well, here is your challenge. client: goes away and calculates for a while. client: Here is the response to your challenge server: go ahead. What are the test parameters? Examples of difficult calculations: Given the seed as the starting string into md5, what is the millionth iteration feeding each output of md5 as the seed for the next call. (It may have to be billionth -- you want the computational time to be comparable to the download time on an average connection.) At your end you have to make the same calculations -- but you can save your results. So pick a seed. Iterate it a billion times, but record all the results. (You could save space by recording only every thousanth result.) When a client attaches you pick it's seed from the file, then look 1 million lines later for the expected reply. The client can be programmed to have a wait call during each iteration. This will mean that the client won't annoy the client's owner, sucking up too many cpu cycles. This would allow you to reduce the number of required iterations. You also set it up so that the server will not accept multiple connections from one IP address. This may be a problem with NATed networks.

How about named connections? For most people this would be only ONE connection, but some people may also run this at work, or on remote servers, So, for example I run a bunch of tests, and my named connection is SGB-FooNet. When I set up a test, my named connections are available as a dropdown list or a radio button. When I create my named connection, one of the fields is for "Nominal package speed"

It's really cool that you can filter test results by service provider, however it would be even more useful, if the nominal package speed was also listed. Would it be possible to add this info to new entries in the database? E.g. With explornet on the old Anik F2 you could get 500K 1M or 2M down, 1/4 of that up. If you want to compare promised vs delivered, you need to know which was promised. Or can you do this already, and I missed it.

My understanding is that all satellite providers provide some form of burst mode, in addition to a FAP whack. It's actually a good policy. The first N megabytes come fairly fast, for me, the first 5 megs about 40-50 KB/s then it tapers off to about 20 some. Then after a longer period it will stabilize around 12 KB/s. This makes web pages reasonably spritely. For Youtube it sucks golf balls through a garden hose. I'm on xplornet (Anik F2) and for us, FAP cuts in around 25 MB/hour. Once it hits, you're dropped to something like 2xdialup speed for the remainder of that hour and all of the next hour. The new satellite is more generous. FAP is calculated on the top 10% of users, and is in 15 minute increments. Anyway, if you want reliable results, I suggest you try running a large number of 10 MB tests or so back to back, and see if the time stabilizes after a few. This will give you an idea of congested speed, or FAP whack speed. Ultimately you have to decide what speed means for you. This sliding throttle schemes the sat companies come up with make speed as meaningful as speed on your commute to work. It depends. It just depends. That said, regular speed tests are a good way to determine if you are getting reasonable returns for you money. Being rural, I don't have a good option beside satellite, and all the companies have pretty much the same plan. When I get really pissed off I remind myself I could be on dialup, which even at the worst the satellite gets is 1/6 the speed at 1/2 the price. My intent, while we are in the process of converting over to the new satellite, is to record twice daily speed tests. This way if they drop their speed after the one month trial, I can complain to consumer affairs for fraudulent advertising.

The second form should work. Try adding a -v or -vv and see if the diagnostics reveal anything. The first two thoughts: You set the new port, but didn't restart the daemon. Or your fingers lead their own life and xxxx in your command is NOT the new port on your server. Check using something like nmap or hping to see that ssh is running on the port you want. If it's not, then scan to see if ssh is running on another port. A third possibility is that ssh is set up to refuse root access (this is the default.) Can you login with password? e.g. ssh -p xxxx [email protected] *** General note: Always have two ways to access a remote machine. Change only one at a time. Make sure that change survives a reboot. Now change the other one.