Small LAN testing and discovery
 

I have a small home LAN mostly 1000Gbit.

PC, Printer, Network Storage, Home Media/Satellite TV Etc.

Eight items in total through a switch in my attic.

Is there software which I can run on my Ubuntu 12.40 workstaion which diagramaticaly shows the network and performs speed tests between the various pieces of kit?

The two ways I know to perform speed test are by writing/reading files or running a client / server utilities like netio or via netcat. I am not aware of any built in tool for printers etc.

I do not know of a single utility that will discover devices as well as perform speed tests. Zenmap is a frontend for nmap which will find network devices.

Search for software that make use of SNMP, however, I am not sure if there are printers/home media stuff that implement SNMP.

I have used etherape and nmap for such purposes.
Here is a link to etherape http://etherape.sourceforge.net/
nmap can be had at nmap.org. I beleive some distros include nmap.

Thanks both.

I have used etherape and nmap in the past, thanks for the reminder fogpipe.

I guess I will have to stick with a sledge hammer to crack a nut approach until someone designs a cheap an chearful application.

From PC to PC, you can just create some files of fixed size (say 100MB, 500MB, 1GB, 2GB), and transfer them between the two boxes using some protocol, and time it. Simple math will tell you how fast it went, and you can figure an average with the different file sizes. Use whatever protocol the NAS device uses, so you compare apples-to-apples.

However, aside from the 'just-wanting-to-know' factor....why? If you've got a gig-e switch, you're nowhere NEAR saturating that link, unless you're shoveling huge amounts of traffic all the time. The only thing you MIGHT be saturating is the CPU/Memory on the switch, and it should have some sort of web page/interface where you can query it.

I stream video extensivly through the switch to several rooms.

I have no problems with SD quality but sometimes streaming HD quality at the same times as moving large files between storage results in the video stuttering.

Its not a show stopper but I've realised that I don't really understand where and how severe any bottlenecks are.

These are early days to understanding my network, I like the idea of moving standard size files around.

I will probably try that soon to see what effect this has.

Well, run the tests when there is NO other traffic on the network, so you can get a baseline. Also, even though you have a gig-e switch...are all your DEVICES gig-e too?? WiFi isn't (yet), and some hardware devices (depending on age), may only have a 100MB/s connection.

And be sure to check your switch...there may be a way to see the CPU/memory usage on it, and with small switches, that can often be the bottleneck. There's a reason the $200 switches work better than the $49, even though both are gig-e. :)

Yes all the equipment refered to have 1000MB/s cards.

(When I mentioned "mostly 1000MB/s" I was of course refering to some legacy kit and some WiFi links which I know the limitations of)

My Switch is certainly sub £30 its an 18 month old, TP-LINK TL-SG1008

8-Ports of 10/100/1000 Gigabit connectivity
Adopts Green Ethernet technology,
Supports IEEE 802.3x flow control for Full-Duplex mode and backpressure for Half-Duplex mode
Non-blocking switching architecture that forwards and filters packets at full wire-speed for maximum throughput
Supports MAC address auto-learning and auto-aging

Or that what it says on the box ;-)

All 8 Ports show the second row of LEDs illuminated (indicating Gigabit traffic)

Bottlenecks are probablly within the buses which the various Gigabit cards plug into maybe?

No, the bottlenecks are probably coming from the CPU/memory on the switch, as I've said before. Go onto the switch management webpage and you might be able to see the device usage statistics. Or, query it with SNMP from your Linux system using snmpwalk, to find the CPU/Memory, and watch it during a big transfer.

I think your definatly correct but unfortunatly the switch TL-SG1008 is unmanaged.

I remember using SNMP on several Novell systems years ago before I retired.

Thanks for your help, lots of useful ideas have been raised.