HTML5 Speedtest

by Federico Dossena
Version 4.3.2, September 5 2017 https://github.com/adolfintel/speedtest/

Introduction

In this document, we will introduce an XHR based HTML5 Speedtest and see how to use it. This test measures download speed, upload speed, ping and jitter.

First of all, the requirements to run this test:

The browser have to support XHR Level 2 and Web Workers and Javascript must be enabled.
- Internet Explorer 11
- Microsoft Edge 12+
- Mozilla Firefox 12+
- Google Chrome / Chromium 31+
- Apple Safari 7.1+
- Opera 18+
Client side, the test can use up to 500 megabytes of RAM
Server side, you'll need a fast connection (at least 100 Mbps recommended), and the web server must accept large POST requests (up to 20 megabytes). Apache2 and PHP are recommended, but not mandatory.

If this looks good, let's proceed and see how to use the test.

Quick installation videos

Installation

To install the test on your server, upload the following files:

speedtest_worker.min.js
garbage.php
getIP.php
empty.php
one of the examples

Later we'll see how to use the test without PHP, and how to configure the telemetry if you want to use it.

Important: keep all the files together; all paths are relative to the js file

Usage

You can modify one of the examples or start from scratch. If you are just editing one of the example, skip to the "test parameters" section.

To run the test, you need to do 3 things:

Create the worker
Write some code that handles the responses coming from the worker
Start the test

Creating the worker

var w = new Worker("speedtest_worker.min.js")

Important: use the minified version, it's smaller!

Response handler

First, we set up a timer that fetches the status of the worker continuously:

var timer = setInterval(function () {
  w.postMessage('status')
}, 100)

Then we write a response handler that receives the status and updates the page. Later we'll see the details of the format of the response.

w.onmessage = function (event) {
  var data = event.data.split(';')
  var testState = data[0]
  var dlStatus = data[1]
  var ulStatus = data[2]
  var pingStatus = data[3]
  var jitterStatus = data[5]
  var clientIp = data[4]
  if (testState >= 4) {
    clearInterval(timer) // test is finished or aborted
  }
  // .. update your page here ..
}

Response format

The response from the worker is composed of values separated by ; (semicolon) in this format:

testState;dlStatus;ulStatus;pingStatus;clientIp;jitterStatus

testState is an integer 0-5
- 0 = Test starting
- 1 = Download test in progress
- 2 = Ping + Jitter test in progress
- 3 = Upload test in progress
- 4 = Test finished
- 5 = Test aborted
dlStatus is either
- Empty string (not started or aborted)
- Download speed in Megabit/s as a number with 2 decimals
- The string "Fail" (test failed)
ulStatus is either
- Empty string (not started or aborted)
- Upload speed in Megabit/s as a number with 2 decimals
- The string "Fail" (test failed)
pingStatus is either
- Empty string (not started or aborted)
- Estimated ping in milliseconds as a number with 2 decimals
- The string "Fail" (test failed)
clientIp is either
- Empty string (not fetched yet or failed)
- The client's IP address as a string
jitterStatus is either
- Empty string (not started or aborted)
- Estimated jitter in milliseconds as a number with 2 decimals (lower = stable connection)
- The string "Fail" (test failed)

Starting the test

To start the test with the default settings, which is usually the best choice, send the start command to the worker:

w.postMessage('start')

If you want, you can change these settings and pass them to the worker as JSON when you start it, like this:

w.postMessage('start {"param1": "value1", "param2": "value2", ...}')

Test parameters

time_dl: How long the download test should be in seconds. The test will continue regardless of this limit if the speed is still 0.00 when the limit is reached.
- Default: 15
- Recommended: >=5
time_ul: How long the upload test should be in seconds. The test will continue regardless of this limit if the speed is still 0.00 when the limit is reached.
- Default: 15
- Recommended: >=10
count_ping: How many pings to perform in the ping test
- Default: 35
- Recommended: >=20
url_dl: path to garbage.php or a large file to use for the download test.
- Default: garbage.php
- The string "-1" disables the test
- Important: path is relative to js file
url_ul: path to an empty file or empty.php to use for the upload test
- Default: empty.php
- The string "-1" disables the test
- Important: path is relative to js file
url_ping: path to an empty file or empty.php to use for the ping test
- Default: empty.php
- The string "-1" disables the test
- Important: path is relative to js file
url_getIp: path to getIP.php or replacement
- Default: getIP.php
- The string "-1" disables the test
- Important: path is relative to js file

Advanced test parameters

enable_quirks: enables browser-specific optimizations. These optimizations override some of the default settings. They do not override settings that are explicitly set.
- Default: true
garbagePhp_chunkSize: size of chunks sent by garbage.php in megabytes
- Default: 20
- Recommended: >=10
- Maximum: 100
xhr_dlMultistream: how many streams should be opened for the download test
- Default: 10
- Recommended: >=3
- Default override: 3 on Edge if enable_quirks is true
- Default override: 5 on Chromium-based if enable_quirks is true
xhr_ulMultistream: how many streams should be opened for the upload test
- Default: 3
- Recommended: >=1
- Default override: 1 on Firefox if enable_quirks is true
xhr_ignoreErrors: how to react to errors in download/upload streams and the ping test
- 0: Fail test on error (behaviour of previous versions of this test)
- 1: Restart a stream/ping when it fails
- 2: Ignore all errors
- Default: 1
- Recommended: 1
time_dlGraceTime: How long to wait (in seconds) before actually measuring the download speed. This is a good idea because we want to wait for the TCP window to be at its maximum (or close to it)
- Default: 1.5
- Recommended: >=0
time_ulGraceTime: How long to wait (in seconds) before actually measuring the upload speed. This is a good idea because we want to wait for the buffers to be full (avoids the peak at the beginning of the test)
- Default: 3
- Recommended: >=1
overheadCompensationFactor: compensation for HTTP and network overhead. Default value assumes typical MTUs used over the Internet. You might want to change this if you're using this in your internal network with different MTUs, or if you're using IPv6 instead of IPv4.
- Default: 1.13359567567567567568 (1048576/925000) assumes HTTP+TCP+IPv4+ETH with typical MTUs used over the Internet
- 1.0513: HTTP+TCP+IPv6+ETH, over the Internet (empirically tested, not calculated)
- 1.0369: Alternative value for HTTP+TCP+IPv4+ETH, over the Internet (empirically tested, not calculated)
- 1460 / 1514: TCP+IPv4+ETH, ignoring HTTP overhead
- 1440 / 1514: TCP+IPv6+ETH, ignoring HTTP overhead
- 1: ignore overheads. This measures the speed at which you actually download and upload files

Aborting the test prematurely

The test can be aborted at any time by sending an abort command to the worker:

w.postMessage('abort')

This will terminate all network activity and stop the worker.

Important: do not simply kill the worker while it's running, as it may leave pending XHR requests!

Troubleshooting

These are the most common issues reported by users, and how to fix them

Download test gives very low result

Are garbage.php and empty.php (or your replacements) reachable?
Press F12, select network and start the test. Do you see errors? (cancelled requests are not errors)
If a small download starts, open it in a text editor. Does it say it's missing openssl_random_pseudo_bytes()? In this case, install OpenSSL (this is usually included when you install Apache and PHP on most distros).

Upload test is inaccurate, and I see lag spikes

Check your server's maximum POST size, make sure it's at least 20Mbytes, possibly more

All tests are wrong, give extremely high results, browser lags/crashes, ...

You're running the test on localhost, therefore it is trying to measure the speed of your loopback interface. The test is meant to be run over an Internet connection, from a different machine.

Ping test shows double the actual ping

Make sure your server is sending the Connection:keep-alive header

Using the test without PHP

If your server does not support PHP, or you're using something newer like Node.js, you can still use this test by replacing garbage.php, empty.php and getIP.php with equivalents.

Replacements

Replacement for `garbage.php`

A replacement for garbage.php must generate incompressible garbage data.

A large file (10-100 Mbytes) is a possible replacement. You can get one here.

If you're using Node.js or some other server, your replacement should accept the ckSize parameter (via GET) which tells it how many megabytes of garbage to generate. It is important here to turn off compression, and generate incompressible data. A symlink to /dev/urandom is also ok.

Replacement for `empty.php`

Your replacement must simply respond with a HTTP code 200 and send nothing else. You may want to send additional headers to disable caching. The test assumes that Connection:keep-alive is sent by the server.

Replacement for `getIP.php`

Your replacement must simply respond with the client's IP as plaintext. Nothing fancy.

JS

You need to start the test with your replacements like this:

w.postMessage('start {"url_dl": "newGarbageURL", "url_ul": "newEmptyURL", "url_ping": "newEmptyURL", "url_getIp": "newIpURL"}')

Telemetry

Telemetry currently requires PHP and either MySQL or SQLite.
To set up the telemetry, we need to do 4 things:

copy telemetry.php
edit telemetry.php to add your database settings
create the database
enable telemetry

Creating the database

This step is only for MySQL. Skip this if you want to use SQLite. Log into your database using phpMyAdmin or a similar software and import telemetry.sql into an empty database.
If you see a table called speedtest_users, empty, you did it right.

Configuring `telemetry.php`

Open telemetry.php with notepad or a similar text editor.
Set your preferred database, $db_type="mysql"; or $db_type="sqlite";
If you choose to use MySQL, you must also add your database credentials:

$MySql_username="USERNAME"; //your database username
$MySql_password="PASSWORD"; //your database password
$MySql_hostname="DB_HOSTNAME"; //database address, usually localhost\
$MySql_databasename="DB_NAME"; //the name of the database where you loaded telemetry.sql

Enabling telemetry

Edit your test page; where you start the worker, you need to specify the telemetry_level.
There are 3 levels:

none: telemetry is disabled (default)
basic: telemetry collects IP, User Agent, Preferred language, Test results
full: same as above, but also collects a log (10-150 Kb each, not recommended)

Example:

w.postMessage('start {"telemetry_level":"basic"}')

Also, see example8_telemetry.html

See the results

At the moment there is no front-end to see the telemetry data; you can connect to the database and see the collected results in the speedtest_users table.

Known bugs and limitations

The ping/jitter test is measured by seeing how long it takes for an empty XHR to complete. It is not an acutal ICMP ping
IE11, Edge 15 (15 only): the upload test is not precise, especially on very fast connections
IE11: the upload test may not work over HTTPS
Firefox: on some Linux systems with hardware acceleration turned off, the page rendering makes the browser lag, reducing the accuracy of the ping/jitter test

Making changes

Since this is an open source project, you can modify it.

To make changes to the speedtest itself, edit speedtest_worker.js

To create the minified version, use UglifyJS like this:

uglifyjs -c --screw-ie8 speedtest_worker.js > speedtest_worker.min.js

Pull requests are much appreciated. If you don't use github (or git), simply contact me at dosse91@paranoici.org.

Important: please add your name to modified versions to distinguish them from the main project.

License

This software is under the GNU LGPL license, Version 3 or newer.

To put it short: you are free to use, study, modify, and redistribute this software and modified versions of it, for free or for money. You can also use it in proprietary software but all changes to this software must remain under the same GNU LGPL license.

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