spdMerlin spdMerlin - v4.x - speedtest and bandwidth monitoring

[JohnD5000]

I hopefully left some help text if you hover over the hours/minutes text when custom is selected, but its basically cron syntax. The "every x" option set to every 6 hours would do what you want.

1) No help text on hover on this field (or any field in spdMerlin -- I moved my mouse all over)

2) Is there anyway to set it to specific hours (say 4am, 8am, 12pm etc), or is it just every X hours after after reboot (i.e. set it to 4 say, it then sets to every 4 hours from that boot time)?

 

[JohnD5000]

Working as intended then! If you didn't exclude the tests then the bandwidth would be constantly decreased eventually to near 0. A couple of users were bitten by this previously

Makes sense, Thanks!

 

[Jack Yaz]

1) No help text on hover on this field (or any field in spdMerlin -- I moved my mouse all over)

2) Is there anyway to set it to specific hours (say 4am, 8am, 12pm etc), or is it just every X hours after after reboot (i.e. set it to 4 say, it then sets to every 4 hours from that boot time)?

I'll look into point 1. It's only applicable to custom schedule then Hours and Minutes next to their respective boxes. Other settings are hopefully self explanatory

It's cron syntax so every 4 is 0,4,8,12 I believe. If you want specific hours, then you'd use custom and comma separate them

 

[Matthew Patrick]

If a new bandwidth is set then the firewall and qos are both restarted.

Ah. And those removes current port forwarding rules yeah? So far I'm doing a workaround by just doing cronjobs on my Pi to port forward it manually every minute.

Also. I'm on the latest stable. When I do uf again it complains of error in chmod /jffs/scripts/spdMerlin saying it's not there.

Also. I apparently can't reset the database . If I do it. It errors out /opt/bin/spdmerlin line 3337 can't open /tmp/spd-stats.sql because of no such file.

Edit : I'm using the option to store it in USB. If I change it to jffs it just errors out saying I don't have enough space for a backup

Also my cron jobs timing is also reset so I changed that too

 

[JohnD5000]

I'll look into point 1. It's only applicable to custom schedule then Hours and Minutes next to their respective boxes. Other settings are hopefully self explanatory

It's cron syntax so every 4 is 0,4,8,12 I believe. If you want specific hours, then you'd use custom and comma separate them

Great, thanks!

My bad, help is working, I wasn't on the right spot. Sorry!

 

[Jack Yaz]

Great, thanks!

My bad, help is working, I wasn't on the right spot. Sorry!

No problem! I use a site like crontab.guru to play around with scheduling, just play with the numbers for minutes and hours which correspond to the spdMerlin fields, and it should do the same thing

 

[Jack Yaz]

Ah. And those removes current port forwarding rules yeah? So far I'm doing a workaround by just doing cronjobs on my Pi to port forward it manually every minute.

Also. I'm on the latest stable. When I do uf again it complains of error in chmod /jffs/scripts/spdMerlin saying it's not there.

Also. I apparently can't reset the database . If I do it. It errors out /opt/bin/spdmerlin line 3337 can't open /tmp/spd-stats.sql because of no such file.

Edit : I'm using the option to store it in USB. If I change it to jffs it just errors out saying I don't have enough space for a backup

Also my cron jobs timing is also reset so I changed that too

If upnp mapped, probably, if manually set then those should be recreated by the firmware (spdMerlin does nothing other than restarting the firewall)

Hm, i might have missed a reference in the update mechanism, I'll check that out ASAP, along with the reset mechanism (it was working on my 68U).

When first updating to 4.2.0 the schedule will be reset unfortunately, I'll amend the changelog to point that out

 

[JohnD5000]

No problem! I use a site like crontab.guru to play around with scheduling, just play with the numbers for minutes and hours which correspond to the spdMerlin fields, and it should do the same thing

Thanks, but just to be clear, I meant the Hover Help is working. I didn't have my mouse over correct area.

 

[Matthew Patrick]

If upnp mapped, probably, if manually set then those should be recreated by the firmware (spdMerlin does nothing other than restarting the firewall)

Hm, i might have missed a reference in the update mechanism, I'll check that out ASAP, along with the reset mechanism (it was working on my 68U).

When first updating to 4.2.0 the schedule will be reset unfortunately, I'll amend the changelog to point that out

Okay thanks!! Also just a question. Since i can't seem to get crontab simulators to tell me this. But if the cron is set to */5 * * * * ... Does that start like every 5 minutes but exactly like 1.05, 1.10, 1.15 or does it depend on when I start the cron jobs ? So if I start it on 1.02 that means it'll start next 5 minutes at 1.07 etc.

 

[Jack Yaz]

v4.2.1 is now available
Changelog:

• FIXED: Reset database option referencing incorrect file - thanks @Matthew Patrick
• FIXED: Force update would report a chmod error - thanks @Matthew Patrick

 

[Jack Yaz]

Okay thanks!! Also just a question. Since i can't seem to get crontab simulators to tell me this. But if the cron is set to */5 * * * * ... Does that start like every 5 minutes but exactly like 1.05, 1.10, 1.15 or does it depend on when I start the cron jobs ? So if I start it on 1.02 that means it'll start next 5 minutes at 1.07 etc.

its fixed, counting from 0. from crontab.guru taken at 07:53

For a bigger list of "runs", https://cronjob.xyz/ seems to do this nicely

 

[Matthew Patrick]

its fixed, counting from 0. from crontab.guru taken at 07:53
View attachment 32885
For a bigger list of "runs", https://cronjob.xyz/ seems to do this nicely

Thank you so much for the fast update and info. The uf and database reset error is fixed (atleast in my limited testing when it's on usb mode)

 

[DanNuke86]

Jack, do I need to be back on develop for raw dl/ul speeds with cake? Updated earlier this morning (after coming in from being on call ) and just noticed the speed tests aren’t being excluded now, even though the ‘exclude from speed tests’ box is checked, although it’s greyed out so I can’t be sure it is definitely doing this.

 

[Jack Yaz]

Jack, do I need to be back on develop for raw dl/ul speeds with cake? Updated earlier this morning (after coming in from being on call ) and just noticed the speed tests aren’t being excluded now, even though the ‘exclude from speed tests’ box is checked, although it’s greyed out so I can’t be sure it is definitely doing this.

no, master and develop are the same. cake should be stopped if it's running. can you check the output of

nvram get qos_enable
nvram get qos_type

and for good measure:

cat /opt/share/spdmerlin.d/config    # if USB
cat /jffs/addons/spdmerlin.d/config   # if JFFS

 

[JGrana]

Nice update, time to buy Mr. Yaz a pint ;-)
Heading over to the pinned donation thread!

 

[DanNuke86]

no, master and develop are the same. cake should be stopped if it's running. can you check the output of

nvram get qos_enable
nvram get qos_type

and for good measure:

cat /opt/share/spdmerlin.d/config    # if USB
cat /jffs/addons/spdmerlin.d/config   # if JFFS

admin88@RT-AX88U-5640:/tmp/home/root# nvram get qos_enable
1
admin88@RT-AX88U-5640:/tmp/home/root# nvram get qos_type
9
admin88@RT-AX88U-5640:/tmp/home/root# cat /opt/share/spdmerlin.d/config    # if USB
PREFERREDSERVER_WAN=9370|Broadband 4 the Rural North (Lancaster, United Kingdom)
USEPREFERRED_WAN=true
AUTOMATED=true
OUTPUTDATAMODE=average
OUTPUTTIMEMODE=non-unix
STORAGELOCATION=usb
PREFERREDSERVER_VPNC1=0|None configured
USEPREFERRED_VPNC1=false
PREFERREDSERVER_VPNC2=0|None configured
USEPREFERRED_VPNC2=false
PREFERREDSERVER_VPNC3=0|None configured
USEPREFERRED_VPNC3=false
PREFERREDSERVER_VPNC4=0|None configured
USEPREFERRED_VPNC4=false
PREFERREDSERVER_VPNC5=0|None configured
USEPREFERRED_VPNC5=false
AUTOBW_ENABLED=false
AUTOBW_SF_DOWN=95
AUTOBW_SF_UP=95
AUTOBW_ULIMIT_DOWN=480
AUTOBW_LLIMIT_DOWN=300
AUTOBW_ULIMIT_UP=34
AUTOBW_LLIMIT_UP=20
AUTOBW_THRESHOLD_UP=5
AUTOBW_THRESHOLD_DOWN=5
STORERESULTURL=false
EXCLUDEFROMQOS=true
SCHDAYS=*
SCHHOURS=01,02,03,04,05,06,07,08,09,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20
SCHMINS=0,30
AUTOBW_AVERAGE_CALC=2
admin88@RT-AX88U-5640:/tmp/home/root# cat /jffs/addons/spdmerlin.d/config   # if JFFS
cat: can't open '/jffs/addons/spdmerlin.d/config': No such file or directory

Not sure what I've done, but I'm getting full speeds again now. Possibly fluked it! Did notice the server had changed when updating spdmerlin, so may have been that server (changed back to the one I was using, gives me 550mbps), although speeds were like 180mbps and I usually get at least 530mbps outside of peak time..

I keep switching about between FlexQoS and CAKE at the moment on my AX88U.. latency has been really bad recently and I'm not sure what (if anything within my control) is causing it

 

[JGrana]

I had a similar experience with results well below what I typically get. After much debugging I found that the automatic selection of the speedtest server is based on shortest ping time.
Unfortunately it started to select (in my area) the University of Rochester. Pings were 10ms but my download speed was consistently around half of my link actual speed.
Both the built in Asus speedtest and spdMerlin showed this.
I manually tested a few other servers and, for the most part, the majority measured actual speed.
I have since fixed my speedtest server to Rochester Institute of Technology. Ping times are in the 30msec area but the measured speeds are very accurate.

Moral of the story - if you start to see reduced speed measurements, try to test with a number of different servers before looking at firmware/addon/QoS issues...

 

[DanNuke86]

I had a similar experience with results well below what I typically get. After much debugging I found that the automatic selection of the speedtest server is based on shortest ping time.
Unfortunately it started to select (in my area) the University of Rochester. Pings were 10ms but my download speed was consistently around half of my link actual speed.
Both the built in Asus speedtest and spdMerlin showed this.
I manually tested a few other servers and, for the most part, the majority measured actual speed.
I have since fixed my speedtest server to Rochester Institute of Technology. Ping times are in the 30msec area but the measured speeds are very accurate.

Moral of the story - if you start to see reduced speed measurements, try to test with a number of different servers before looking at firmware/addon/QoS issues...

Completely agree! I think I've just missed the server reverting back to auto selection after updating spdmerlin. I have previously tried all servers to get the best one for me and chose a preferred server.

 

[Wistuplu]

Hello Jack Yaz,

Thank you for your scripts.

2cts suggestion for spdMerlin, based on 4.1.1.

I have been playing around with different Ookla speedtest servers. I thought that maybe it would be cool to have the server id as a "column" in the exported data.

I'm not in a position to evaluate the cons, so maybe it would incur undesirable storage drawbacks or whatever. (EDIT: BTW: It is possible to check the location (but not the exact server) on the speedtest.net site by accessing the URL in the .csv.)

Take care
Best regards
W.

PS: spdMerlin is really a great way to monitor the link and provide feedback to the ISP. I was just offered a newer generation modem by my ISP based on the monitoring of performance during peak hours. Thanks again.

 

[Matthew Patrick]

Yeah spdmerlin is one of the best .. i do have some feature suggestions. I don't know if people want this but. Here it is..

So is it possible that for every Speedtest time it automatically do multiple Speedtests sequentially? With the ability to change the servers? (As in. If say I set it to 3 . I could either have manual servers for some or all of em. Or just auto which will use different closest server to Speedtest for some or all speedtests)

And then on csv and webui you will be able to see that every Speedtest contains 3 (for example) speedtests which shows the servers too.

Would be awesome but idk if it's what the people want or not haha.. i want this feature personally because sometimes . The server that auto picks isn't always the best. Or I sometimes want to set it. So say. One is the closest server. One is say server somewhere outside of the country etc. Since their speed usually varies. And it's kinda nice to know .. anyways just my wild ideas

Oh and for the autoBW I guess you could make it so if people want it might be based on the 1st speedtest or 2nd or 3rd. Or just the average of 3 of em for example.

Cheers..