So you think your wireless link is slow, or your gigabit ethernet card is under performing. How can you tell? Here are two tools I use to test network throughput.
netio
Created by Kai Uwe Rommel, it tests by sending and receiving packets of varying sizes and reports throughput in kilobytes per second.
Installation
- x86
# wget # ftp://ftp.sunfreeware.com/pub/freeware/intel/ 10/netio-1.26-sol10-x86-local.gz # gzip -d netio-1.26-sol10-x86-local.gz # pkgadd -d netio-1.26-sol10-x86-local
- SPARC
# wget # ftp://ftp.sunfreeware.com/pub/freeware/sparc/ 10/netio-1.26-sol10-sparc-local.gz # gzip -d netio-1.26-sol10-sparc-local.gz # pkgadd -d netio-1.26-sol10-sparc-localUsage
- Server-side
# netio -u -s
- Client-side
# netio -u SERVER_IP_ADDRESS
Here are results on a 100Mbps link:
UDP connection established. Packet size 1k bytes: 11913 KB/s Tx, 11468 KB/s Rx. Packet size 2k bytes: 11954 KB/s Tx, 11509 KB/s Rx. Packet size 4k bytes: 12274 KB/s Tx, 11687 KB/s Rx. Packet size 8k bytes: 12284 KB/s Tx, 11697 KB/s Rx. Packet size 16k bytes: 12292 KB/s Tx, 11702 KB/s Rx. Packet size 32k bytes: 12348 KB/s Tx, 11714 KB/s Rx. Done.Sending and receiving hovered around 11-12MB/s which is on par with 100Mbps.
netperf
Created by Rick Jones and discovers the maximum throughput of a link, reporting in megabits per second.
Installation
# wget ftp://ftp.netperf.org/netperf/netperf-2.4.4.tar.gz # tar zxvf netperf-2.4.4.tar.gz # cd netperf-2.4.4 # export CFLAGS="-lsocket -lnsl -lkstat" # ./configure # make # make installUsage
- Server-side
# netserver
- Client-side
# netperf -H SERVER_IP_ADDRESS
Here are results on a 100Mbps link:
Recv Send Send Socket Socket Message Elapsed Size Size Size Time Throughput bytes bytes bytes secs. 10^6bits/sec 49152 49152 49152 10.00 94.88
94.88 Mbps is the final result, not bad.
6:35 PST - May 1, 2009