Following command allows testing upload and download speed on the Linux, without need of installing any packages.

wget -q https://raw.github.com/sivel/speedte...eedtest_cli.py && chmod +x speedtest_cli.py && ./speedtest_cli.py && rm -f ./speedtest_cli.py
Sample output:
Retrieving speedtest.net configuration...
Retrieving speedtest.net server list...
Testing from IPOwnerName (ServerIPHere)...
Selecting best server based on latency...
Hosted by United Networks (Jacksonville, FL) [29.40 km]: 6.362 ms
Testing download speed........................................
Download: 182.10 Mbit/s
Testing upload speed............................................. .....
Upload: 1.28 Mbit/s
If you need to monitor realtime bandwidth, you can try iftop or nload