Measure download speed

Hi PRTG and users!

First off, let me say that I've been using other SNMP graphing programs in the past, including writing a lot of my own scripts in MRTG, and I LOVE PRTG! I wish I had come across your software 10 years ago.

I think what really is starting to set PRTG apart from others is the "XML/EXE Script Advanced Sensor" and this is what I used to solve the problem above.

I hope this answer isn't 4 years too late for whoever needed this, but I spent the past few days working on a way to accurately measure download speeds with PRTG.

I realize you do have a solution as posted above that involves downloading files and graphing the connection speeds, but I feel that method is inaccurate in certain situations:

• A very fast connection requires a very large file download to get an accurate graph of connection speed.
• You are relying on a single host to test the connection speed, and speed to that host may vary, even if your overall speed to the internet in general is consistently high.

So without further ado, here is my solution:

In a nutshell, you'll be installing three programs on your PRTG monitoring PC or Remote Probe:

• Strawberry Perl, which lets you run:
• App-Speedtest, a Perl-based command line speed test program. Download this.
• Also, SED, a Linux-based script that can reformat a text file. Download this too.

Here's what happens when you have it all working:

• You use Windows Task Scheduler to call the batch file--included below--every 15 mins.
• * This batch file runs App-speedtest, which outputs the results as XML to a text file.
• This batch file then runs four SED scripts against the text file format it correctly for PRTG.
• This batch file then copies the resulting file into the appropriate PRTG directory so the Advanced Probe can read it.
• PRTG then reads this text file every 15 minutes and creates the graphs we love so much!

Here is the batch file. This assumes you have the SED install directory in your windows path:

rem can be run with PRTG Custom EXE to XML parser, as either a PowerShell or BAT file.

rem requires Strawberry Perl for Windows, SED for windows, and the PERL-based speedtest called App-speedtest

rem call speedtest and output to xml file
perl c:\speedtest\speedtest.pl -q10 -P > c:\speedtest\speedtestresults.bat

rem now let's format this file so PRTG can read the channels

rem add echo at newline
sed.exe -i -e "s/^/echo /" c:\speedtest\speedtestresults.bat

rem add @echo off
c:\speedtest\sed.exe -i "1s/^/@echo off \n/" c:\speedtest\speedtestresults.bat

rem remove fourth line
c:\speedtest\sed.exe -i -e "4d" c:\speedtest\speedtestresults.bat

rem escape opening xml bracket
c:\speedtest\sed.exe -i -e "s/>/^>/g" c:\speedtest\speedtestresults.bat

rem escape closing html bracket
c:\speedtest\sed.exe -i -e "s/</^</g" c:\speedtest\speedtestresults.bat

rem finally, copy the speedtestresults.bat file into the PRTG custom XML app executable folder
copy c:\speedtest\speedtestresults.bat "C:\Program Files (x86)\PRTG Network Monitor\Custom Sensors\EXEXML\speedtestresults.bat"

Assuming that you've downloaded the required programs and ran the batch script, you should be able to add a custom EXE advanced probe to your PRTG installation, and see "speedtestresults.bat" as one of the options listed.

Enjoy!

Miles

Edit: Formatting by mod.