HOW TO Run a Network Speed Test - SilverAzide/Alien GitHub Wiki

HOW TO: Run A Network Speed Test

To run a network speed test, do the following:

  1. Tap the Internet speed area on the skin to go to the Speed Test page.
  2. Click the Run Speed Test button. This will launch your browser and open the speedtest.net website, reset your speed statistics, and prepare for a new run (the skin will start monitoring your network performance at this point).
  3. From the speedtest.net website, click the Go button to launch the test.
  4. When the test is complete, click the return arrow at the bottom of the Alien skin Speed Test page to navigate back to the main page (the skin will stop monitoring your network performance at this point).

NOTE 1:

The skin reports your upload and download speeds as the peak average value over an approximately four second interval. This is not the same as what speedtest.net is doing, but it should be fairly close as long as your network speeds do not vary greatly during the test period.

NOTE 2:

By default, this skin uses Rainmeter's NetIn and NetOut measures to monitor the upload and download speeds of the currently active adapter. You may notice impossibly high values being reported (for example, a wireless adapter capable of at best 450 megabits/sec reporting near gigabit speeds). This is a known issue with Rainmeter and is typically caused by virtual network adapters. If you want a more accurate measurement, you can install the Gadgets suite and from there install the NetMonitor service. The skin will automatically detect and use the NetMonitor service instead of Rainmeter's Net measures.

NOTE 3:

If you would like to use a different speed test service, right click the skin and select the Alien settings option from the menu. Set the SpeedTestProvider variable to the URL of your preferred provider. If you would like to test local area network speeds, instead of a URL you can enter the full path to a command file that copies a large file over your network to and from a server. The file being copied must be large enough so that it takes at least 4 or 5 seconds to copy it each way. This measurement could be affected by the speed of the hard drives, though most modern drives are much faster than a network adapter.