General :: Monitoring Internet Connection Speed?

Quote:

I'm trying to find a good host for my site, and I've been trying to get one with a fast, reliable connection - I frequently use it as a proxy server for various areas, and since my connection is frequently a 50 Mb or 100 Mb line, I need a fast network connection so it doesn't slow down too much when I switch to the proxy server.

At the moment, I've narrowed it down to a couple of providers that are all within a few hops and <6ms away from my main location; it pretty much comes down to connection speed. One in particular that I'm trialing offers an metered 100100 connection at a good price, so I'm hoping to go with them, but I want to make sure the connection is solid and doesn't drop to a much lower speed during the day if they are sharing it among many users.

I have a pretty simple speed test procedure - I use wget on a 1GB file hosted on a backbone with a 1GB connection, and see how fast it downloads. For now, it's sticking at a steady 11.2 MBs or 90 Mbs, which is fast enough for me, but I need to make sure it can maintain that speed even in times of heavy usage.

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Basically, I need a script that runs wget every half hour and logs the output and time in a reasonably readable format. It's probably something simple enough to do, but I'm just learning my way around the linux command shell, so some simple instructions on how to create and run such a script would be great [CentOS 5]. I have full root access to the server and I'm the only user on it if it matters.