Regarding upload and download speed from ping command

[ncnaveen_arasu]

Hi 

From the ping output we get a average latency, but from the same ping output is there any way to calculate the link speed (LAN/WAN).

Is it possible to get the download and upload speed of the link from ping output.

or, uploading and downloading the file from source and destination is the only option to find the U/D speed.

In speed test forums and all we do come across based on the latency it selects a different size file for upload and download. Why it is so, and why not we go for a single file.

Please clarify.

Thanks

Naveen

[Marvin Rhoads]

Ping (icmp echo requests and replies) will only tell you round trip time (latency) to a given IP address at a point in time. It uses single packets (whose size can be specified but still single packets).

To determine upload / download speed (effective bandwidth) you need to transfer a significant sample of data (many many packets) and ascertain the speed based on the time to transfer.