[GTALUG] Wget under-reports data transfer rate ("bandwidth") by 5%

[Alvin Starr]

Just off the top.
Wget would not account for the packet overhead.

5% overhead may be reasonable depending on your MTU.

On 03/22/2016 08:07 PM, Peter Renzland wrote:
> Wget can be used to measure download data rate.
> For example, 
> wget --output-document=/dev/null http://speedtest.wdc01.softlayer.com/downloads/test500.zip
>
> Then observe the progress meter and kill the process.
>
> IMHO, wget thinks a MB is 2^20 (== 1MiB), instead of 10^6.  This results in a 5% error.
> (Softlayer seems to have made the same error.)
>
> Am I wrong?  Have others noticed that?  According to wget's definition of "bug", this error does not seem to be a "bug".  Or?
> (It doesn't crash -- just gives a wrong answer, based on a wrong assumption.)
>
> -- Peter Renzland at gmail.com
>
>
>
>
>
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