Uplink traffic during throughput test

[hIGH_aND_mIGHTY]

When I run a throughput test it will provide one number. When I look at the Uplink traffic during the time of the test it always shows higher sometimes by 10s of Mbs. I was assuming that the throughput test shows download speed and the Uplink shows total download and upload. Is this correct or am I bearing out an old adage? If I am wrong what is the cause of the difference between the uplink traffic and the result from the throughput test?

[PhilipDAth]

I am assuming you are talking about the built in Meraki speed test.

The throughput test only includes its throughput, while the uplink includes that plus any other traffic being generated by your site.

Also you need to consider the measurement basis.  I don't know, but the speed test might be av instantaneous reading, or an average over the duration of the test, while the uplink results might be a 60s (or some other period) average.

[hIGH_aND_mIGHTY]

Good point. On investigating they both show the measurement in Mbps. I also look at the Uplink traffic bandwidth usage before and after the test. The off test bandwidth usage appears to be less than the difference between the throughput test result and the uplink traffic. Would it be safe to assume that could be upload that is being used during the test. That the throughput test does also kinda tests upload bandwidth?

[PhilipDAth · Accepted solution]

It is not clear to be what the throughput test is actually measuring.  the document just says to the "dashboard".

https://documentation.meraki.com/zGeneral_Administration/Tools_and_Troubleshooting/Throughput_test_t...

[Adam]

In my experience the throughput has always just been the down speed.  No indication of upload speed.  But I stopped using that test in lieu of running http://www.speedtest.net/ from a client machine since I typically need to know the circuits upload capabilities as well.  Also if you have two WAN connections that tool doesn't give you the ability to select which one you want to test the throughput on.  So it'll likely just use whichever you have specified as the primary uplink.  

The last section in the article @PhilipDAth linked above provides some interesting clarification.

https://documentation.meraki.com/zGeneral_Administration/Tools_and_Troubleshooting/Throughput_test_t...

[MerakiDave]

The throughput test under any of the live tools pages is just measuring back-end mtunnel throughput for the control channel between your Meraki device and the Dashboard shard it's connected to back in the data center (cloud).  You can see what the speed test is actually doing (nothing exciting) by running a pcap and looking at all the TCP/7752 traffic.  It's not meant to be an indication of throughput for your clients to/from the Internet, so you're correctly using something like speedtest for that.  Thanks @PhilipDAth for sharing that docs link, that's the one to reference.