Updated Ookla Speedtest Server Requirements

Tue Nov 10 16:30:25 UTC 2015

On 10 November 2015 at 14:34, Lorell Hathcock <lorell at hathcock.org> wrote:

> Good point.  There will be no one customer that can get a 10G speedtest
> from
> us.  But there will be hundreds that should be able to get a 1G test.
> Should any of them try simultaneously, I want to be ready.  Plus I don't
> know what miscellaneous speedtests from the net to expect, so I want to
> affordably overbuild.
>

Here is a MRTG from the server that serves gigabit.speedtest.net:

http://ballerup1.gigabit.dk/ballerup-core1-xgei3.png

This is a 10G interface. The server is used by our users that include many
1G users. You are unable to see that because the speed test is much less
than 1 minute in duration (1 minute is the sampling period for the graph) .
Also you see the speed tests done by everyone else that uses our server.

As you can see you do not need to worry too much about the traffic levels.
You would be very unlucky to have two 1G users doing a test at exact the
same time. It would be extremely unlikely that you have MORE than two 1G
users doing a test in parallel. The tests are simply not that long and
people do not run test all day long. They try it a few times, and then
again a few times to show off for their friends or during troubleshooting.

Based on this experience I will say that you do need a server with 10G
interface (like ours) but you would not need to worry much about the
performance of that server. Just about any server with a PCIe interface
will be able to serve static files with the required speed on a 10G
interface. Use something modern like nginx and you are set.

The required performance is 1G for one of your own 1G users doing a test
plus the background noise from the external tests, which means that you
would get a good test with just 1.1G of performance :-).

Regards,

Baldur