Recent enhancements to eG Enterprise have added functionality to allow you to proactively test your internet speed with synthetic monitoring (“robot” tests that simulate real user activity).
Using the new functionality you can proactively monitor internet speeds 24×7 from any location.
The performance and quality of an Internet connection plays a major role in any IT environment. Use cases for this new functionality include:
- Troubleshooting when internet speed from a branch office is low, when users are experiencing slowness during access and content downloads.
- Assessing whether internet speeds vary over time, and whether you are actually getting the speeds promised by your ISP.
- For organizations relying on Microsoft 365, other SaaS services and cloud services, the quality of their internet connection has become even more important than before for ensuring acceptable user experience.
Ookla Internet Speedtest Integration
eG Enterprise now integrates with the Ookla Speedtest – the global broadband speed test. Ookla Speedtest is a free tool that measures the quality and performance of an Internet connection.
Speedtest measures the speed between a device and a test server using the device’s internet connection. It performs tests over a custom protocol over TCP sockets.
Speed tests measure your current connection’s maximum speed – how fast your device can upload and download information – by accessing nearby test servers.
eG Enterprise integrates with the Ookla Speedtest CLI (Command Line Interface) for monitoring Internet Connection speed repeatedly and automatically at a frequency that can be configured.
Figure 1 shows the layer view in eG Enterprise of the results of the Speedtest tests. Key metrics that are monitored include:
- Latency of network ping
- Jitter of network ping
- Packet loss of network ping
- Download speed
- Download latency
- Download jitter
- Upload speed
- Upload latency
- Upload jitter
What is Jitter?
Jitter is the variation in how long data packets take to travel across a network connection. Instead of arriving at consistent intervals, packets may come early or late, creating timing instability. High jitter can cause noticeable problems in real-time applications such as video calls, voice over IP, and online gaming, where smooth, evenly timed data delivery is essential. Common causes include network congestion, Wi-Fi interference, overloaded routers, or unstable internet connections.
From the layer model shown in Figure 1, IT teams can use the detailed diagnostics icon to drill down into details of the test including the ISP and test server data (as shown in Figure 2).
Download Speed Test
eG Enterprise also provides a basic default test to monitor internet connections – the “Download Speed Test”. This downloads a file from a pre-configured web site URL and measures connection availability and speed. The Download Speed Test can be executed by a Windows or Linux/Unix agent. It should be noted that this test does not depend on any 3rd party libraries but it does not provide results regarding Network ping/jitter and Upload speed. Figure 3 shows the simple configuration required for this test.
Once configured eG Enterprise will proactively test the download speed regularly and alert you to any performance issues affecting the internet connection (see Figure 4)
Download Speed Test vs. Ookla Internet Speedtest
eG Enterprise customers can choose to use both test or just one. The following comparison table is provided to help you make that choice.
| Download Speed Test | Ookla Internet Speedtest |
| Easy to set up; no 3rd party dependency | Requires CLI to be downloaded and installed on agent system. |
| Reports availability, download time and speed only. | Reports download speed, latency and jitter. Also reports these metrics using network ping. |
| Usually unmanaged and unknown | Usually fully managed, although BYOD may be found |
| Does not measure upload speed. | Reports upload speed, latency and jitter as well. |
| Requires no special ports to be used. The target server is selected during test configuration. | TCP port 8080 is used for communication. ICMP is used to discover the closest server. |
Speed Tests for Troubleshooting – Remote Control Actions
Both speed tests are supported as part of eG Enterprise’s Remote Control Actions. This means that an IT administrator or a helpdesk operator with appropriate privileges can run the tests as required to investigate internet performance on a remote system such as a user’s laptop endpoint. Figure 5 shows the results of the Ookla internet speed test reported by a VM agent running on a physical laptop.
Internet Speed Reporting
eG Enterprise now also includes built-in ready-to-go reports that allow IT administrators to overview internet speed performance over timescales of their choosing. These visually attractive reports mean that your internet speed monitoring can be used for management reporting as well as trend analysis and future planning. See Figures 6 & 7 for example reports.
eG Enterprise is an Observability solution for Modern IT. Monitor digital workspaces,
web applications, SaaS services, cloud and containers from a single pane of glass.
eG Enterprise is an Observability solution for Modern IT. Monitor digital workspaces,
web applications, SaaS services, cloud and containers from a single pane of glass.
