Most folk have encountered the tool speedtest.net for testing broadband bandwidth speeds. To test your debian linux server/vps bandwidth speed using the same service via CLI do the following:
SSH to your server as root or use sudo
Download the speed test python script
wget https://raw.github.com/sivel/speedtest-cli/master/speedtest.py
Set permissions to allow it to be executed
chmod a+rx speedtest.py
At this point you could just run it from where you downloaded it. Personally I think it’s a useful utility to have on the server so do the following to make it a system wide application.
mv speedtest.py /usr/local/bin/speedtest
Set permissions on the binary
chown root:root /usr/local/bin/speedtest
Now you can perform a speed test of your bandwidth by doing the following
speedtest
NB if you get the error /usr/bin/env: ‘python’: No such file or directory
Installing Python minimal should resolve
apt install python-minimal
To share the result to speedtest.net (for example to show your provider) enter
speedtest --share
To see all options
speedtest /?
How speedtest your server/vps bandwidth using the speedtest.net service.