Fighting with your Internet Provider

My apartment complex recently contracted a bulk internet service to provide what they would say was better and cheaper internet service. After several weeks of slow and intermittent connections I decide to document how the service was performing and post the data for my fellow tenants to view. This first post will quickly outline how I scripted a internet connection monitor using Python.

1. Download the SpeedTest Command Line Interface from here
2. Use this python script to collect the data on a periodic basis and place it in a log file

Here are my results for July 18th 2021

1. Data is for only part of the day, I started monitoring around 2pm
2. There is a gap in the data from 3:30pm to 6:15pm since the connection was severed and I did not have automatic reconnection selected on my laptop

Notice that

1. Something strange happened at around 3:15pm when the network started to become unstable
2. Download performance drops through the night but upload performance is not that bad.
3. The Century Link – Clinton server is used as a machine-on-the-internet so that the speed test can test the connection from my device to one actually on the internet.

Finally, here are some definitions to help you understand what you are looking at

Latency
Latency is a measure of delay. In a network, latency measures the time it takes for some data to get to its destination across the network. It is usually measured as a round trip delay – the time taken for information to get to its destination and back again.

Jitter
JItter is used to describe the amount of inconsistency in latency across the network, while latency measures the time it takes for data to reach its destination and ultimately make a round trip.

packet loss
When accessing the internet or any network, small units of data called packets are sent and received. When one or more of these packets fails to reach its intended destination, this is called packet loss. For users, packet loss manifests itself in the form of network disruption, slow service and even total loss of network connectivity. Note that packet loss does not mean the data is total lost, usually the systems will retransmit the data (adding to network traffic etc.)

Download
Measured in Mega bits per second (Mbps) this is essentially how fast your data is coming down from the internet to your device.

Upload
Measured in Mega bits per second (Mbps) this is essentially how fast your data is leaving your device as it goes to the internet.