How to Use Wget

GNU Wget is a non-interactive tool for downloading files from the internet. Wget is a mature package with a robust set of features. Typically wget is used to retrieve the latest packages from HTTP or FTP repositories.

The noninteractive nature of Wget makes it perfect for use in automatic scripts. This guide will walk you through downloading the Linode Speed Test files by using wget.

Use Wget to Download Speedtest Files

Picking the right location for your Linode is important, you have to decide what facility is closest to you and your clients. Linode offers a series of Linode Speed test files. By using wget speed test, you can test your network connection speed with each of these clients.

1. To download one file using wget, use only wget <url>:

   wget http://speedtest.newark.linode.com/100MB-newark.bin

   As the download begins, a small progress bar appears with information about the download:

           HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
           Length: 104857600 (100M) [application/octet-stream]
           Saving to: ‘100MB-newark.bin’
   
           100%[======================================>] 104,857,600  202MB/s   in 0.5s
   
           2017-06-23 13:13:19 (202 MB/s) - ‘100MB-newark.bin’ saved [104857600/104857600]
         

2. Write the output of Wget to a file using the -O option.

   wget -O Newark http://speedtest.newark.linode.com/100MB-newark.bin
   

   After the download completes, a similar message appears:

   2017-06-23 13:24:21 (48.4 MB/s) - ‘newark’ saved [104857600/104857600]
   

   You can also log the output of a file with -o as in this example:

   wget -o newarkTest http://speedtest.newark.linode.com/100MB-newark.bin
   

   Wget then makes a file and log the download information inside of it:

   File: newarkTest

   1 2 3 4

   02350K .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........100% 457M 0s 102400K 100% 0.00 =0.6s 2017-06-23 13:31:54 (179 MB/s) - ‘100MB-newark.bin.2’ saved [104857600/104857600]

3. When you use wget to download a large files, you can use the -b option in the wget command to download in the background:

   wget -b http://speedtest.newark.linode.com/100MB-newark.bin
   Continuing in background, pid 8764.
   Output will be written to ‘wget-log’.
   

   If the file is too large, or you need to resume the download at a later time, you can use the -c option to continue the download:

   wget -c http://speedtest.newark.linode.com/100MB-newark.bin
   

4. To get a more accurate benchmark, repeat the download multiple times. The --delete-after flag cleans up the file after each download.

   for i in {1..5}; do
     time wget --delete-after http://speedtest.newark.linode.com/100MB-newark.bin;
   done
   

More Information

You may wish to consult the following resources for additional information on this topic. While these are provided in the hope that they will be useful, please note that we cannot vouch for the accuracy or timeliness of externally hosted materials.

• Windows Wget Download
• Arch Wiki
• Gentoo