traffic generator tools

OTIM · 05-18-2008, 06:48 AM

Hi,

Our company just bought two layer 2 links from our ISP to connect the main office with two branch offices.
One links have the capacity of 200 Mbps and the other 300 Mbps.
I was wondering how to test these links to see (without envolving users)if the ISP is actually giving us 200 Mbps and 300 Mbps.
Is there any tool/program/script out there to generate that much traffic?
I tried some packet flooders but they send many packets with 1 byte lenght and they do not saturate the link

Thanks

baldy3105 · 05-18-2008, 03:29 PM

"iperf" will do the job nicely. I work for Cable & Wireless and use iperf for proving network performance. You can use it to test throughput with UDP for actual link capacity testing and TCP to get real world application thoughput figures. I've used this between two laptops with GiGE and it flooded that quite hapilly.

Don't forget that your UDP throughput will show link capacity, but your TCP throughput is highly dependant on latency and you will need to make sure your TCP window is set appropriately.

lsteacke · 05-19-2008, 08:44 AM

You also might want to consider using MGEN. It has a lot of functionality so it also might come in handy in the future.

http://cs.itd.nrl.navy.mil/work/mgen/

OTIM · 05-19-2008, 10:01 AM

Thank you very much guys.
I will try them both.