How to detect Network Signal Strength in iOS Reachability

My original thought was to time the download of a file, and see how long it takes:

@interface ViewController () <NSURLSessionDelegate, NSURLSessionDataDelegate>

@property (nonatomic) CFAbsoluteTime startTime;
@property (nonatomic) CFAbsoluteTime stopTime;
@property (nonatomic) long long bytesReceived;
@property (nonatomic, copy) void (^speedTestCompletionHandler)(CGFloat megabytesPerSecond, NSError *error);

@end

@implementation ViewController

- (void)viewDidLoad {
    [super viewDidLoad];

    [self testDownloadSpeedWithTimout:5.0 completionHandler:^(CGFloat megabytesPerSecond, NSError *error) {
        NSLog(@"%0.1f; error = %@", megabytesPerSecond, error);
    }];
}

/// Test speed of download
///
/// Test the speed of a connection by downloading some predetermined resource. Alternatively, you could add the
/// URL of what to use for testing the connection as a parameter to this method.
///
/// @param timeout             The maximum amount of time for the request.
/// @param completionHandler   The block to be called when the request finishes (or times out).
///                            The error parameter to this closure indicates whether there was an error downloading
///                            the resource (other than timeout).
///
/// @note                      Note, the timeout parameter doesn't have to be enough to download the entire
///                            resource, but rather just sufficiently long enough to measure the speed of the download.

- (void)testDownloadSpeedWithTimout:(NSTimeInterval)timeout completionHandler:(nonnull void (^)(CGFloat megabytesPerSecond, NSError * _Nullable error))completionHandler {
    NSURL *url = [NSURL URLWithString:@"http://insert.your.site.here/yourfile"];

    self.startTime = CFAbsoluteTimeGetCurrent();
    self.stopTime = self.startTime;
    self.bytesReceived = 0;
    self.speedTestCompletionHandler = completionHandler;

    NSURLSessionConfiguration *configuration = [NSURLSessionConfiguration ephemeralSessionConfiguration];
    configuration.timeoutIntervalForResource = timeout;
    NSURLSession *session = [NSURLSession sessionWithConfiguration:configuration delegate:self delegateQueue:nil];
    [[session dataTaskWithURL:url] resume];
}

- (void)URLSession:(NSURLSession *)session dataTask:(NSURLSessionDataTask *)dataTask didReceiveData:(NSData *)data {
    self.bytesReceived += [data length];
    self.stopTime = CFAbsoluteTimeGetCurrent();
}

- (void)URLSession:(NSURLSession *)session task:(NSURLSessionTask *)task didCompleteWithError:(NSError *)error {
    CFAbsoluteTime elapsed = self.stopTime - self.startTime;
    CGFloat speed = elapsed != 0 ? self.bytesReceived / (CFAbsoluteTimeGetCurrent() - self.startTime) / 1024.0 / 1024.0 : -1;

    // treat timeout as no error (as we're testing speed, not worried about whether we got entire resource or not

    if (error == nil || ([error.domain isEqualToString:NSURLErrorDomain] && error.code == NSURLErrorTimedOut)) {
        self.speedTestCompletionHandler(speed, nil);
    } else {
        self.speedTestCompletionHandler(speed, error);
    }
}

@end

Note, this measures the speed including the latency of starting the connection. You could alternatively initialize startTime in didReceiveResponse, if you wanted to factor out that initial latency.

---

Having done that, in retrospect, I don’t like spending time or bandwidth downloading something that has no practical benefit to the app. So, as an alternative, I might suggest a far more pragmatic approach: Why don’t you just try to open a MKMapView and see how long it takes to finish downloading the map? If it fails or if it takes more than a certain amount of time, then switch to your offline map. Again, there is quite a bit of variability here (not only because network bandwidth and latency, but also because some map images appear to be cached), so make sure to set a kMaximumElapsedTime to be large enough to handle all the reasonable permutations of a successful connection (i.e., don’t be too aggressive in using a low value).

To do this, just make sure to set your view controller to be the delegate of the MKMapView. And then you can do:

@interface ViewController () <MKMapViewDelegate>
@property (nonatomic, strong) NSDate *startDate;
@end

static CGFloat const kMaximumElapsedTime = 5.0;

@implementation ViewController

// insert the rest of your implementation here

#pragma mark - MKMapViewDelegate methods

- (void)mapViewWillStartLoadingMap:(MKMapView *)mapView {
    NSDate *localStartDate = [NSDate date];
    self.startDate = localStartDate;

    double delayInSeconds = kMaximumElapsedTime;
    dispatch_time_t popTime = dispatch_time(DISPATCH_TIME_NOW, (int64_t)(delayInSeconds * NSEC_PER_SEC));
    dispatch_after(popTime, dispatch_get_main_queue(), ^(void){
        // Check to see if either:
        //   (a) start date property is not nil (because if it is, we 
        //       finished map download); and
        //   (b) start date property is the same as the value we set
        //       above, as it's possible this map download is done, but
        //       we're already in the process of downloading the next
        //       map.

        if (self.startDate && self.startDate == localStartDate)
        {
            [[[UIAlertView alloc] initWithTitle:nil
                                        message:[NSString stringWithFormat:@"Map timed out after %.1f", delayInSeconds]
                                       delegate:nil
                              cancelButtonTitle:@"OK"
                              otherButtonTitles:nil] show];
        }
    });
}

- (void)mapViewDidFailLoadingMap:(MKMapView *)mapView withError:(NSError *)error {
    self.startDate = nil;

    [[[UIAlertView alloc] initWithTitle:nil
                                message:@"Online map failed"
                               delegate:nil
                      cancelButtonTitle:@"OK"
                      otherButtonTitles:nil] show];
}

- (void)mapViewDidFinishLoadingMap:(MKMapView *)mapView
{
    NSTimeInterval elapsed = [[NSDate date] timeIntervalSinceDate:self.startDate];
    self.startDate = nil;
    self.statusLabel.text = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%.1f seconds", elapsed];
}