A quick and simple tool for link bandwidth testing (aka Throughput Testing) is included in many flavours of Cisco's IOS. Although it is hidden and officially unsupported, it is documented and functional.
By running 'ttcp' from the command line in privileged mode on two different routers, one
can test links between the routers.
Cisco documents the tool with
Document 10340, Using Test TCP (TTCP) to Test Throughput.
A couple of other non-Cisco tools are available and maintain compatibility in order to
perform link testing between most combinations of routers, Unix, Linux, and Windows
platforms.
Netcordia has a
Java based client, while Unix and Windows based client can be found at
ttcp. The source compiled on
Linux with no problem.
In
The Story of the TTCP Program, Mike Muuss
discusses some of the history of ttcp. It seems that he is the original author of the venerable ping program. In
the same article, Mike illustrates a clever file transfer capability of ttcp, if effect being a UNIX "pipe"
between two machines across a network. On the destination machine:
ttcp -r | tar xvpf -
and on the source machine:
tar cf - directory | ttcp -t dest_machine
and on possible intermediate machines:
ttcp -r | ttcp -t next_machine
A discussion of additional variants of ttcp can be found at
ttcp/nttcp/nuttcp/iperf versions. It looks
as though the version used by Cisco is a renamed nttcp. A version called
nuttcp will echo traffic back.
iperf uses the same concept but uses a
different name and includes different functionality for network perforamance analysis. I'm not sure if it is
compatible with ttcp.
When using iperf, the -P option will run multiple tcp tests simultaneously.
A document called Guide to Bulk Data Transfer over a WAN describes the use
of iperf to determine data transfer rates under various scenarios.
Linux.com has an article called
Benchmarking network performance with Network Pipemeter, LMbench, and nuttcp
by Ben Martin.
As a followup to my TTCP blog entry, here is a list of a few other network throughput testing tools: iperf 3 on github, was on google code. iperf: windows binaries ttcp: code for ttcp , nttcp nuttcp
Tracked: Jul 06, 21:26