Ubuntu 18 LTS Bandwidth issue
I recently upgraded a webserver that was running in the Dallas Linode center from Ubuntu 16LTS to 18LTS. I was noticing some slower results browsing to the website to I did some speedtests on the host. I'm wondering if anyone has seen this and knows how to fix it. Here is my test process:
Run the following two linode-cli commands to build a 16LTS and 18LTS test system:
linode-cli linodes create --tags test --region 'us-central' --image 'linode/ubuntu16.04lts' --booted true --root_pass 'xxx' --label test16 --swap_size 1024 --type 'g6-nanode-1'
linode-cli linodes create --tags test --region 'us-central' --image 'linode/ubuntu18.04' --booted true --root_pass 'xxx' --label test18 --swap_size 1024 --type 'g6-nanode-1'
Once they boot log into each and run the following commands as root:
apt-get update
apt-get -y dist-upgrade
apt-get install speedtest-cli
reboot
Once the reboot is complete, login as root again and run the speedtest command using the same server (so the hops are the same) … I selected server 2300 which is Southwest Arkansas Telephone Coop only 270km from the Linode DC:
16-result:
root@localhost:~# speedtest --server 2300
Retrieving speedtest.net configuration...
Retrieving speedtest.net server list...
Testing from Linode (66.228.54.6)...
Hosted by Southwest Arkansas Telephone Coop (Texarkana, AR) [270.85 km]: 27.63 ms
Testing download speed........................................
Download: 1209.97 Mbit/s
Testing upload speed..................................................
Upload: 264.40 Mbit/s
18-result:
root@localhost:~# speedtest --server 2300
Retrieving speedtest.net configuration...
Testing from Linode (45.79.25.178)...
Retrieving speedtest.net server list...
Retrieving information for the selected server...
Hosted by Southwest Arkansas Telephone Coop (Texarkana, AR) [270.85 km]: 18.792 ms
Testing download speed................................................
Download: 1517.62 Mbit/s
Testing upload speed..............................................
Upload: 4.17 Mbit/s
As you can see the upload speed on the 18LTS is conserderably slower. I'm sure this is a configuration issue, any ideas?
2 Replies
I just tested with the same problem. looks like a buggy speedtest program in 18.04.
see
https://askubuntu.com/questions/1159807/slow-upload-speed-on-machine-running-ubuntu-server-18-04
which mentions
https://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-to-run-a-network-speed-test-from-a-headless-linux-server/
which links to
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sivel/speedtest-cli/master/speedtest.py
the speedtest.py gets symmetric upload and download speeds.
Great find on the broken speedtest in 18LTS! After removing the repo version of speedtest and installing the github version I reran the command on my webserver 18LTS and got the following:
root@localhost:~# speedtest --server 2300
Retrieving speedtest.net configuration...
Testing from Linode (x.x.x.x)...
Retrieving speedtest.net server list...
Retrieving information for the selected server...
Hosted by Southwest Arkansas Telephone Coop (Texarkana, AR) [270.85 km]: 30.369 ms
Testing download speed............................................
Download: 1684.39 Mbit/s
Testing upload speed..............................................
Upload: 1099.12 Mbit/s
It was a reporting issue and not a configuration issue.