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Peter Smit
Asked: 2011-03-17 02:40:28 +0800 CST

What tool can I use to test the speed of my network

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I would like to find a tool to test the network bandwidth between 2 servers. Also statistics about latency and package reliability would be nice.

I have shell access to both servers, but no root access. I can run open some high numbered port. The machines are running CentOS.

I have tried to test speeds with scp, but I think what I get to see is the disk write speeds instead of the network speed.

networking

4 Answers

  1. I recommend using iPerf - http://sourceforge.net/projects/iperf/

    Runs as a client and a server with a good number of options for traffic types.

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  2. SSH is not a good idea as it adds extra overhead. If your servers have SATA drives and Gigabit Network connection then, hard drives could be a bottleneck. If you have SAS drives and RAID controller w/ cache, it won't. iPerf is a good solution, and the other simple solution is ftp. You can also use iptraf or nload to watch your bandwitch usage.

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  3. I like this solution: Use netcat to test network speed

    It only requires netcat which is typically installed by default with most Linux distributions.

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  4. Assuming that you have ssh servers set-up on these machines and ofcourse that ping is installed by default...

    You should be able to test the speed by transferring some large files between these using [ssh server "cat remote_file" > local_file]

    And package reliability just by using [ping server]

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