How to detect user internet speed?

Anvil Q&A
1

Hi,

Is there any way I can detect my app users internet speeds?

Thanks!

2

When the connectionā€™s unreliable, itā€™s call ā€œLie-Fiā€
https://www.udacity.com/course/offline-web-applications--ud899 (Free course)

Itā€™s might be what youā€™re looking for

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3

A quick google search (ā€œpython measure internet speed of userā€) brought up this :

and this :

Iā€™ve not used them, and Iā€™m sure there are others.

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4

If Iā€™m not mistaken, I think @advancedhealthsys is looking to measure the usersā€™ internet speed.

Those tools, when running, will measure the speed from the Anvil servers to the internet, not the usersā€™s servers, I think ??

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5

That is a good point, I didnā€™t think of that.

6

I think the word you used ā€˜detectā€™ is a bit wrong. I think the question could be rephrased as ā€˜how do I initiate a test on the client side to assess their internet speedā€™.

The way most speed test sites work, is store a bunch of files of various sizes ranging from small to large, locate them on different servers around the world, and then measure how long it takes for the client to download those files.

The reason there are various sizes, is that you can get very different results on different networks.
The reason they are also cached (stored) on different servers in different countries, is the distance the client is from the server, affects the speed. The closer the 2 are, the faster the speed.

You can test the other way around too, by uploading files. Of various sizes, and to various locations too, and time how long it takes.

Iā€™m guessing in the anvil context, you could time how long things take to upload/download, from the client frontend, to the server backend. To make things ā€˜measureableā€™ the file sizes would probably be in the 1 megabyte range, or multiples.

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7

ā€œSpeedā€ has several different measures. Colloquially, two of the most common are:

  1. Bit rate ā€“ how fast a given-size block of data will arrive. Of course, data travels in both directions, often with different speeds in each direction.
  2. Latency ā€“ how much time elapses between the moment a signal is sent, and the moment it is received. Again, latency can be different depending on the direction of flow.

Bitrate is significant for large data transfers. Latency is significant for remote procedure calls (which Anvil is built on).

These figures can also change, depending on when you measure them. On a congested network, speeds will be lower. But congestion itself is variable.

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