The Network Monitor in Quicklaunch leverages speedtest.net to perform network speed tests and ensure they are within the limits defined in your Quicklaunch settings.  There are thousands of speedtest servers around the world that are usually hosted by ISPs. When Quicklaunch starts, it will determine the top 10 geographically closest speedtest servers and then select the one with the lowest latency for its bandwidth monitoring.    To determine download speed Quicklaunch downloads random small images from the speedtest server.  To determine upload speed, Quicklaunch sends a random character string to the speedtest server.


For more information on speetest, see http://www.speedtest.net/help



Diagnosing Network Monitor Issues


NOTE: the following is for technical support staff who are familiar with network configuration and reading JSON/XML.  If you do not have these skills, please contact your local technical support staff for assistance.


If your Network Monitor is not working within 5 minutes of starting Quicklaunch it may be because firewall rules are preventing Quicklaunch from accessing http://www.speedtest.net or one of the 10 closest servers.


To determine the 10 closest servers, do the following:

  1. Start Quicklaunch and within 30 seconds you must:
    1. Go to settings -> system -> network
    2. Check the Debug checkbox, then save
  2. Wait about 2 minutes
  3. Open Windows Explorer
  4. Go to the directory %TEMP%
  5. Search for the file "Quicklaunch.debug*"  - select the latest one
  6. Open the file in a text editor
  7. Search for "BandwidthCapacityTester:NearestServers".  This JSON will contain the list of the 10 closest servers.
  8. Search for "BandwidthCapacityTester:BestServer". This will be the selected server - for this session of Quicklaunch


To confirm you have access to any of the servers simply copy the URL to your browser. It should give a response that indicates a size.  You can use this to test your firewall rules.


The Best Server will possibly change for each session of Quicklaunch, so it is best to add all 10 closest servers to allow HTTP bi-directional traffic to your firewall rules.