Posted: Sat Sep 01, 2007 17:43 Post subject: LAN bandwidth tester
Is there any software available to test my router's local bandwidth? I found something that I beleive worked with software called Endpoint, but I don't care for it that much. I'd really like something that could run on a single machine(time to access the router rather than another machine) and that doesn't require some service to be running.
If there's some plugin that could be installed on DD-WRT, the majority of the routers I'd like to check would be running this. However, I'd prefer some software that could be run off say a flash drive or something for general testing purposes.
I'll check out that package you linked sometime. What I tried was calel QCheck. Which it does what I want it to, but again, it requires "Endpoint" to also be installed and running on both machines.
I'll check out that package you linked sometime. What I tried was calel QCheck. Which it does what I want it to, but again, it requires "Endpoint" to also be installed and running on both machines.
If you're looking to find current throughput through the router, you can get that from Netflow or SNMP.
If you're looking to find out the maximum throughput through the router, you'll need two endpoints to talk to each other as fast as they can, hence having to run software on two machines. The custom utilities like the ones you're using can be pretty handy as they can tell you performance at different packet sizes, etc, and they're designed to do exactly what you're trying to do. I'm sure there are ones out there that don't need to be installed and can run as a standalone.
There is a method using ICMP to ping a router with various packet sizes and based on the response times, calculate a theoretical performance number. I have a utility that does this, but I wouldn't consider it a very accurate measurement, especially if you're looking to test LAN performance (straight switched) since ICMP is responded to by the router and would be a lower performance number.
The most basic method would be to ftp a file from one machine to the other and look at the rate since FTP is pretty accurate. You can find plenty of light FTP servers that can be run off a flash drive on one machine, and just use the DOS client on the other machine (or a light FTP client). Or if you want to install nothing at all, just use windows file sharing to transfer a file between them, time it, and calculate the speed, but windows file sharing has overhead to it so it will show as slightly lower performance than a raw FTP transfer. Or install an FTP server on the WRT, but you'd need to use CIFS/Samba to get a large enough file for an accurate test, so that has overhead and may not be capable of going at full speed either.
Cisco has an application called TTCP built into their routers, maybe there is something similar you can put on linux/wrt, but again you'd need to test between two routers that have this feature enabled/installed.
