Hello,
Speedtest on my OpenWRT switches confuses me......
I have installed the speedtestcpp package on my 2 OpenWRT APs and on 3 switches (1x D-Link, 2x Netgear) and run it in the CLI.
My Internet connection is a fiber optic line with 600/300 MBit/s and my AP is behind for example the D-Link switch.
My AP display the following speed:
Download: 645.07 Mbit/s
Upload: 365.75 Mbit/s
But if I run the speedtest on the switch, I get the following result for all 3 switches for example:
Download: 57.25 Mbit/s
Upload: 36.59 Mbit/s
Even when I run speed tests on the end devices connected to the switches, the speeds are still correct....
So it looks like it works on the end devices but not directly on the switch?
Is there any explanation for this? Is that perhaps simply the case in the end?
Running speed tests on the network infrastructure -- especially switches, but sometimes also routers -- will usually not give you a meaningful result. This is because the speed test requires that traffic is generated/terminated on the device itself which is an operation that runs on the CPU. The CPUs in most switches and many routers cannot generate/terminate the traffic at high speeds. Instead, these devices are designed to move traffic (switching and/or routing) via specialized hardware that has significantly higher performance for moving traffic through the device. You can think of this as the difference in the rates of package movements between a shipping service (think FedEx, postal service, etc.) because they don't have to pack/unpack each box... imagine how slow it would be if they had to unpack and/or pack each box.
So, bottom line, don't worry about the speed test results on device. They don't mean anything. Instead, test the speed of the traffic passing through the device (by putting proper computers on either end and testing the bandwidth).