A long time ago, CZ.NIC started a project called Netmetr, which was performed in cooperation with the Czech Telecommunication Office (CTU). The goal was to provide a reliable Internet connectivity benchmark that ordinary people can use to verify the parameters of their Internet connection. The cooperation went well and CTU was getting more and more interesting data about the quality of Internet connectivity in the Czech
Republic. Moreover, CTU decided to integrate the service into their systems and maintain it by themselves. They used the open-source software Netmetr and created Nettest – their own instance integrated into their environment. That unfortunately meant that the Netmetr itself lost its main purpose and it no longer made sense to keep it running.
However there was one last use-case to take care of. In Turris we integrated Netmetr and it got quite popular. But as it no longer made sense to maintain it from CZ.NIC’s point of view, there was a decision to be made in front of Turris . Kill the feature users liked or take over the maintainership of server and run it just for Turris. Finally, as the title suggests, we took the third option. We looked around and searched for available options and found one.
We found LibreSpeed. not only that it is an open-source software measuring your bandwidth. It is also a community maintained set of servers that are running around the world and ready to test your connectivity. So, we decided to join. We spun up a server and got it included in the list of public servers. We will be integrating it into the Netmetr.cz website in the coming weeks and the client is already integrated in the upcoming version of Turris OS.
This solution has multiple benefits. Anybody who happens to be topologically close to our server can run speed tests against it. There will be again a web test available on the Netmetr website. But it will be available even to foreigners just passing through using the LibreSpeed client without the need to actively search for local services. On the other hand, our users can start using servers closer to their location. Measuring latency from Tokyo to Prague, although interesting, might not be as relevant to the user as measurement against server situated in the same country. On top of that, the server is really easy to deploy and maintain, so if you don’t like the public ones, you can deploy your own.
So give our LibreSpeed server a try, look forward to the integration in Turris OS and if you know somebody who has a spare server with fast connectivity lying around in the areas not yet well covered by community servers, tell him to join 😉