High-Capacity Bandwidth Testing Software? 32
An anonymous reader asks: "I work for an ISP which specializes in high bandwidth (100+ megabit) fiber-based delivery solutions. As with any other ISP we sometimes have to perform troubleshooting with customers who are reporting slow throughput. We currently have a home-grown bandwidth testing server in order to point-to-point test the throughput across our own network. Unfortunately (fortunately), customers have begun purchasing amounts of bandwidth that are capable of exceeding our testing capacity. Given a multi-gigabit network infrastructure and an on-net server with a gigabit Ethernet port, what software packages are available which can reliably test throughput approaching one gigabit? Cross-browser compatibility and 'click-here-to-test' usability should be considerations."
Ok, the usability isn't great (Score:3, Informative)
TPTest (Score:5, Informative)
You want .. Iperf (Score:3, Informative)
http://dast.nlanr.net/Projects/Iperf/ [nlanr.net]
http://sourceforge.net/projects/Iperf/ [sourceforge.net]
Very configurable, and if u want GUI or network tuning.. read the FAQ, they give suggestions.
Re:Easy (Score:2, Informative)
1) Process speed
2) I/O reads and writes
3) OS (swapping)
Look towards a dedicate unit (test head) with remote capabilities.
DISCLAIMER: I work in the Telecom Industry.
Spirent - Smartbits & Avalanche (Score:5, Informative)
The main game in town is Spirent [spirentcom.com].
In the IPS & firewall testing world, they're what everyone uses, but even in lots of load balancing applications etc they're what people use.
There are a few software solutions around that do an ok job, but very few that can do much at decent speed (ie > 400Mbit). I have a pretty crack team of devs, and using hand tuned open source, and home-spun apps, we got by for a few years, but should have given in years earlier and just got a set of Spirent gear. You'll save time.
Their Smartbits line are basically hardware based packet generators, able to blast away for a variety of scenarios.
Their Avalanche line are hardware based full session generators, so you can re-create a web server being hammered by thousands of clients. I just signed a cheque for > $100k for a single pair of avalanche boxes however, so bring your cash box...
You'll probably find Spirent's hw based solutions frustrating, but if you work with others doing similar work they're very widely used, and you can exchange scripts etc..
There is an Irish company that was moving in to this space, and had an ok product, but it was a bit immature when I last tried it. Sorry, but their name escapes me- google should know.
--Q
Hardware (Score:3, Informative)
Netperf (Score:4, Informative)