show download speed in asymmetric network
 

Hi

here is my situation

(Client-Desktop) - Network - (Server-Desktop)

I am running ubuntu 14.04 64 bit on (Server-Desktop) with ip 172.16.116.1
I am running fedora 17 64 bit on (Client-Desktop) with ip 172.16.116.2

My network allows 600Mbps upstream and 1Gbps downstream .
I have to demonstrate 1Gbps downstream data rate.

(1)Currently I ran iperf3 as client on (Client-Desktop) and iperf3 as server on (Server-Desktop) .
Got throughput of 582Mbps .


(2)I ran an ftp server (vsftpd) on (Server-Desktop) and host a 1GB file then did
on client
wget -O- -o log_file --user=NAME --password='PASSWORD' ftp://server_dekstop_ip/file_in_home_folder &> /dev/null

Got 1Gbps download speed even if my network allows 1Mbps upload speed.

But , now there is hard disk storage constraint on server. So can't host a > 1GB file.

Is there a way to demonstrate 1Gbps downstream speed ?

Thanks.
Please let me know , if I missed any details.

Hi,

I'd say iperf3 is a good test.
582Mbps is suspiciously close to 600Mbps, isn't it?
Have you run iperf the right way around?

from the iperf3 man page :
by default, iperf client sends, and server receives. So from what I understand, you measured upstream performance with iperf.

sorry for late reply.
Seems , you want to say that iperf measures throughput in one direction.
So , If I ran client with -R then I should get 1Gbps.
I will do that and report back.
Thanks.

thanks serafean .
Now I understand that iperf works in one direction , so pretty useful.
I think , there is a little bit of data activity (approx 3Mbps for 1Gbps throughput) in other direction too . Like , if packets are being sent from server to client (-R switch) then how will server display the throughput and jitter . Probably , client reports back to server the number of packets it processed and delay (for jitter measurement).

Also I was thinking if there was a way to download /dev/zero then we will tell wget to get first 1G bytes of that file.
That way , no space requirement on ftp server too.
So far , haven't got this working.