My Internet Speed

I wrote this app so I can periodically monitor my internet speed and:

• Collect data to build a report about the quality of the service provided by my ISP
• Automatically tweet my ISP when the speed is lower than expected – surely optional
• Store speed test results in PostgreSQL
• Check all speed test results in a web API
• Monitor all speed test tasks

At home this runs on my Raspberry Pi, but not all services are compatible — check my ideal setup for a suggestion on how to run these services.

Installing

Requirements

It is important to run this app in a computer connected to the internet via ethernet cable, not via wireless – this is the way to have some accuracy in testing the speed.

• Docker
• Docker Compose

Optionally, if you want the Twitter feature to work (it will only tweet when the speed is below the configures threshold):

• Twitter consumer key and secret
• Twitter access token and access token secret

You can get these Twitter credentials at the Twitter Application Management dashboard.

Some speed test backends do not provide a URL with the results. In these cases we take a screenshot from the speed test result and upload it to Imgur. If you want to use this feature, you need an account there and a client ID for a registered application.

Settings

Before you get started, copy .env.sample as .env and edit as follows:

1. Set INTERVAL according to how often (in minutes) you want to run the speed test (e.g.: 20 for 20min)
2. Set your TIMEZONE accordingly

The default speed test backend is SpeedTest but you can use EAQ (Entidade Aferidora da Qualidade de Banda Larga) certified by ANATEL setting BACKEND to brasil_banda_larga.

If you want the app to post tweets:

1. Add your Twitter credentials at the top of the file
2. Set CONTRACT_SPEED to the speed in Mbps you are paying for (e.g.: 60 if you contract says 60Mbps)
3. Set THRESHOLD to the minimum percentage of the contract speed you contract or local laws enforces your ISP (e.g.: 0.4 for 40%)
4. Set your tweet message using {contract_speed} where the contract speed in Mbps should be (for example, 60 for 60Mbps), {real_speed} where the measured speed should be, and {percentage} where comparing both should be (feel free to use the Twitter handle of your ISP too)
5. Add {result_url} in order to add the link to the result provided by the speed test backend

For example, if:

• the measured speed is 20Mpbs
• your CONTRACT_SPEED is 60
• the THRESHOLD is 0.4
• and TWEET is configures as I pay for {contract_speed}, but now @MyISP is working at {real_speed} – merely {percentage} of what I'm paying for :( {result_url}

The final tweet would be:

I pay for 60Mbps, but now @MyISP is working at 20Mbps – merely 33% of what I'm paing for :( http://www.speedtest.net/result/7307126311

If you like this app, add #MyInternetSpeed https://github.com/cuducos/my-internet-speed to your tweets ; )

Database

This docker-compose.yml lefts out the db container from all possible depends_on in order to make it easier to use an external/remote database to persist data (just point POSTGRESs variables and the PGRST ones to somewhere else).

Thus if you are using the Docker database it is useful to start it manually first:

$ docker-compose up -d db

In both cases run this one off command to create the database tables:

$ docker-compose run --rm beat python \
  -c "from my_internet_speed.models import Result; Result.create_table()"

Spinning up the app

$ docker-compose up -d

Services and compatibility

Containers

This spins up different services that might be useful to check the status of the speed tests:

Backends

My ideal setup

Given the ARM processor incompatibilities, I actually use three computers to run these services:

1. In my RaspberryPi (ARM processor, but it is still the only device with ethernet cable I have) I run beat, broker and flower:
   $ docker-compose up -d beat flower
2. In my main computer (x86 processor) I run the api and the dashboard so I can check the results:
   $ docker-compose up -d beat dashboard
3. The database I run in the cloud, a free tier at tiny turtle (free) at ElephantSQL

Troubleshooting

UnixHTTPConnectionPool(host='localhost', port=None): Read timed out.

I was getting this error in my Raspberry Pi when trying to run docker-compose up. This seams to be a workaround:

$ export DOCKER_CLIENT_TIMEOUT=600
$ export COMPOSE_HTTP_TIMEOUT=600

Testing

$ docker-compose run --rm beat py.test

Also we use Black code formatter:

$ docker-compose run --rm beat black . --check