When you are using a network connection whether a fast or slow, you might often wish to know about the speed of the connection. Actually, It is often useful to check and keep an eye on the network speeds. That requires you to monitor both the upload and download speed at the current time. If you are using a Ubuntu OS, you can easily check the network speed by adding a Gnome extension in your Ubuntu desktop. If you know the add-ons or extensions of the Firefox and chrome, NetSpeed extension is exactly the same.
A useful tool in Ubuntu to keep an eye on the download and upload speed of the network is NetSpeed that helps to monitor multiple interfaces. NetSpeed is a gnome extension that displays the current upload and downloads speed of the network in the top panel of your Ubuntu desktop. It displays the network speed in bytes /sec.
In this article, we will see how to add NetSpeed extension in your Ubuntu to display internet speed on desktop. It is really a simple and short procedure. I will use Ubuntu 18.04. LTS for explaining the method mentioned in this article.
Installing NetSpeed extension
We will install the NetSpeed extension by using the Ubuntu Software application. To launch it, press Windows key on your keyboard to open Ubuntu’s Dash menu. Then type ubuntu software. From the results, click on Ubuntu Software.
Then in the search bar of Ubuntu software, type netspeed. When the results appear, click on the NetSpeed extension.
Then click on the Install button to add this extension to the Desktop.
It will take just a few seconds to add this extension. When finished, you will notice the download and upload speed at the top right corner of your desktop. When clicked, it will pop up a small menu displaying all active network interfaces with their download and upload speed.
Configuring NetSpeed extension
When you click on the cog icon in the pop-up menu, it will open up the Settings dialog box. From the settings dialog box, you can configure some options like:
1. Select network interface to monitor
Choose a network interface. The interface you select will be by default monitored by the NetSpeed. You can also choose to monitor all network interfaces. On the Device to monitor option, use the drop-down menu to select a single interface or click on All to monitor all network interfaces simultaneously.
2. Display Sum of bandwidth
You can choose to display download and upload bandwidth individually or you can choose to display the sum of them.
3. Appearance
Set the label size to adjust and improve the appearance of the display.
4. Timer
NetSpeed uses 1 second (1000 ms) interval by default to run the network speed monitoring. However, you can change this interval to any number.
So, this was the quick overview of installing and using NetSpeed on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. We saw how to use this tool to display internet speed on the Desktop in Ubuntu.