Suggestion: Invoke curl with systemd-run using resource control

I think the script might produce more reliable numbers if it was only allowed to use a certain amount of resources (CPU and possible Memory). That way it wouldn't be that influenced by other operations on the system, like it was pointed out in the blog post.

I'd suggest using systemd-run like this:

systemd-run --user \
    --property=CPUQuota=50% \
    --property=AllowedCPUs=0 \
    /bin/sh -c "curl"

To restrict curl to one CPU and only allow it to use a specific amount of time on it.

The documentation for resource control can be found here.

I've tested it locally with while true; do echo hello; done and for me it seems like the AllowedCPUs only works for system services, not --user, so maybe it has to altered to run as one.

I don't know if the system the script runs on has systemd, but if it is not available, it should be possible to replicate the behavior.

Start by locating the benchmark script's curl invocation and compare its current behavior with the proposed systemd-run command on systems with and without systemd. Define done as reproducible resource limits that do not break environments lacking systemd, then verify that the benchmark still produces usable numbers.