Matt Bobke

Writing a PowerShell module was a goal that I’ve had for myself since I learned of PowerShell Gallery and helper modules such as Plaster, PSDeploy, BuildHelpers, InvokeBuild, and Pester. I have never worked with CI/CD build pipelines prior to this and a tool like AppVeyor was extremely foreign. I’m really happy with the progress that I’ve made, and while it isn’t perfect by any means, it works!

Background

When I decided that I wanted to write a module, I had the same thought that I’ve had plenty of times in the past when I set out to make a video game: I have no idea what I actually want to make. However, I did know that I wanted to try my best to check a few boxes with my first module:

  • The module needed to be as user-friendly and small in scale as possible, while still maintaining a realistic use
  • The module should be useful in an enterprise environment as well as general public use
  • A build pipeline should automate all building, testing, and deployment

I’ve recently done some work with iPerf to test some internal network connections in the office, and I realized that network bandwidth testing was a simple concept (user-friendly), small in scale, useful in an enterprise environment, and useful to the general public. I found that common public network bandwidth testing tools such as Speedtest by Ookla don’t have a public API, but iPerf does have a Chocolatey package available. Thus, PSSpeedTest was born.

Features

  • Set-SpeedTestConfig sets the JSON configuration file that stores default speed test servers/ports for public internet and local network speed tests.
  • Get-SpeedTestConfig prints the current default configuration to the screen.
  • Invoke-SpeedTest runs a speed test against 1) the stored public internet server (and optional port) using the -Internet switch, 2) the stored local network server (and optional port) using the -Local switch, or 3) a specified server (and optional port) using the -Server and -Port switches.
  • Install-SpeedTestServer sets up an iPerf speed test server on 1) the local computer if -ComputerName is not specified (or a domain-joined network computer if it is), 2) on a port besides the default of 5201 if -Port is specified, 3) using credentials other than those of the current user if -Credential is specified.

I’m still trying to determine what the best means of documenting each function is; currently each function has detailed comment-based help available with Get-Help FunctionName -Full, but platyPS might be a better and more readily-available option that doesn’t require installing the module prior to reading the help. I’d rather not have the full usage of each function detailed in the primary module readme.

Future Plans

  • Better help
  • A means of decommissioning a speed test server deployed via Install-SpeedTestServer

If you’re so inclined, give the module a try and submit some pull requests if you see anything that you want to improve! My next post will detail my process of creating the pipeline that I use for working with this module.

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