Check network speed?

Question

How can I check my network speed (LAN) ?
I'm just copying a 1.7 GB file over Gbit Ethernet to a NAS, and it takes about 10 minutes. Is that OK? And how can I check if it is?

Answer 1

You would need an accurate time measurement.
About 10 minutes doesn't cut it.
1.7 gigabytes divided by 10 minutes equals 0.17 gigabytes per minute
0.17 gigabytes per minute divided by 60 equals 0.0028 gigabytes per second
0.0028 gigabytes per second times 8 equals 0.02267 gigabits per second
0.02267 gigabits per second multiplied by 1000 equals 22.67 megabits per second.
Was there a wireless connection in that transfer?
You can't read and write data from a hard drive at gigabit LAN speeds.
The hard drive read and write speeds are the limiting factor.
If the copy program wasn't designed to double buffer the data the process is.
Read data from source disk which includes the latency to find the data on the disk.
Transmit the data to the target disk.
Write the data to the target disk including the latency to find the available space on the target disk.
Acknowledge receipt of the data by the target disk back to the source disk.
Repeat until all of the data has been transferred.
The amount of data transferred each time was determined when the copy program was written.
It could be as little as one disk sector which is probably 512 bytes.