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

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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-local

Usage

• 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

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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 install

Usage

• 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.