Testing network with iperf

If you need to measure network throughput and capacity, I haven’t found a simpler solution than iperf. There isn’t much to say about the operation of iperf — it’s a very simple application in server/client mode.

In short, iperf can be installed on two machines within your network. You’ll run one as a server, and one as a client.

First we need to install iprerf (debian and ubuntu way):

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aptitude install iperf

Start iperf on server:

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iperf -s

Start iperf on client:

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iperf -c [server_ip]

The client side shove TCP packets through the network interface as quickly as it can for a period of only 10 seconds by default. Once that’s complete, you’ll see a report on the server and client that will look like this one:

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id@crunch:~$ iperf -c 10.1.100.4
------------------------------------------------------------
Client connecting to 10.1.100.4, TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 16.0 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
[  3] local 172.16.0.5 port 57327 connected with 10.1.100.4 port 5001
[ ID] Interval       Transfer     Bandwidth
[  3]  0.0-10.0 sec  25.5 MBytes  21.4 Mbits/sec

In my case the client was started on my aspire one netbook and connected over my home WLAN.

-t flag can be used to set running time (default 10 seconds)