Monitor your Internet with a Raspberry Pi

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Style Pass

2021-06-23 17:30:06

Internet Service Providers are almost universally despised. They've pushed for the FCC to continue defining 25 Mbps as "high use" broadband, and on top of that they overstate the quality of service they provide. A recently-released map of broadband availability in the US paints a pretty dire picture:

Here in St. Louis—where I guess I should count my lucky stars we have 'high use' broadband available—I have only two options: I can get 'gigabit' cable Internet from Spectrum, or 75 megabit DSL from AT&T.

But Spectrum's "gigabit" Internet is 930 megabits down—in ideal conditions—but only 40 megabits up. And that's the highest plan that costs about $150 a month!

Some would die for those speeds (see the map above), but much of the world is better off. And are you really getting the speeds you pay for? You probably don't know.

Well, I do, thanks to a $35 Raspberry Pi! And you don't even need a Pi, you could run the software I use on any computer. I just like having a dedicated computer to run all my Internet connection tools, so it's easy to backup or replace, and it doesn't get bogged down.