Test download speed from a Linux terminal with wget
To test download speed from a Linux terminal, run wget -O /dev/null on a large test file. wget throws the data away and prints the average speed.
Run wget -O /dev/null https://proof.ovh.net/files/100Mb.dat and read the average speed in brackets on the last line.
The steps and the reason are below.
A server or VM with no browser can still tell you how fast its internet connection downloads. The wget command fetches a large test file, throws it away as it arrives, and prints the average speed when it’s done.
Run the download test
The test file below is 100 MB of random data on an OVH server in France, made for exactly this:
wget -O /dev/null https://proof.ovh.net/files/100Mb.dat-O /dev/nullsends the download nowhere, so nothing fills your disk and disk speed doesn’t count.- Almost every Linux install has wget. If yours doesn’t,
sudo apt install wgeton Ubuntu and Debian. - Every run uses 100 MB of data, which matters on a capped connection.
Read the result
The average download speed is the figure in brackets on the last line wget prints. I ran it on my Ubuntu VM in Johannesburg and got this:
/dev/null 100%[=================================>] 100.00M 22.1MB/s in 5.6s
2026-10-28 13:14:29 (18.0 MB/s) - ‘/dev/null’ saved [104857600/104857600]The speed on the progress bar (22.1MB/s here) is the last moment of the download. The bracketed 18.0 MB/s is the average over the whole file, and that’s the one to note.
Convert MB/s to Mbit/s
The speed wget prints is in megabytes per second, counting a megabyte as 1,048,576 bytes. ISPs quote megabits per second, so multiply wget’s figure by about 8.4. The 18.0 MB/s above is about 151 Mbit/s.
Fix a test that hangs at Connecting
A test that sits at Connecting to … |2a00:…|:80... and never moves usually means the IPv6 route to that server is broken: wget tries IPv6 first when your machine has it. I hit this with Tele2’s test server on the same VM. Press Ctrl+C and force IPv4:
wget -4 -O /dev/null https://proof.ovh.net/files/100Mb.datRunning it once with -4 and once with -6 also shows whether your IPv6 is slower than IPv4.
What does the result tell you?
The wget test measures one download, over one connection, from one server in Europe. From South Africa that includes the undersea cable route, so a local speed test can show more. Run it a few times and at different times of day before blaming your line, and compare against a second server if the result looks low.
The old SoftLayer test files are gone
Older guides use wget -O /dev/null http://speedtest.ams01.softlayer.com/downloads/test500.zip. That server name no longer exists, so wget stops at unable to resolve host address (checked October 2026). Use the OVH file above instead.
The options are in the GNU wget manual.