Presentation
Sometimes, because you need to regularly transfer big files, because you need to download softwares, it can be interesting to measure the network throughput available between two servers.
Several tools exist for this, here we will look at the iperf tool.
Prerequisites
iperf needs to be installed and run on both servers. This can be a limitation in some environments where you only control one side of the communication.
To install the iperf tool, you first need to install the EPEL repository.
Then, you need to type:
# yum install iperf
Test Procedure with iperf
iperf works in a client/server model: one iperf command is run on one server in server mode, one iperf command is launched on another server in client mode.
As previously said, on one server you need to run iperf in server mode:
[server]# iperf -s ------------------------------------------------------------ Server listening on TCP port 5001 TCP window size: 85.3 KByte (default) ------------------------------------------------------------
Note1: The -s option starts the iperf command in server mode.
Note2: Use the -p option to specify an other port than the default 5001 port.
Note3: Use the -u option to use UDP instead of TCP.
As seen above, you will have to temporarily open the 5001 tcp port:
[server]# firewall-cmd --add-port=5001/tcp
On another server, you need to launch iperf in client mode (here IPserver is the IP address of the server):
[client]# iperf -c IPserver ------------------------------------------------------------ Client connecting to IPserver, TCP port 5001 TCP window size: 85.0 KByte (default) ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 3] local IPclient port 50494 connected with IPserver port 5001 [ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth [ 3] 0.0-10.0 sec 113 MBytes 94.6 Mbits/sec
Advanced Configuration
To get the best measurements, you need to add the following arguments:
[server]# iperf -l 1M -w 4M -f M -s ------------------------------------------------------------ Server listening on TCP port 5001 TCP window size: 0.41 MByte (WARNING: requested 4.00 MByte) ------------------------------------------------------------ [client]# iperf -l 1M -w 4M -f M -t 60 -c IPserver ------------------------------------------------------------ Client connecting to IPserver, TCP port 5001 TCP window size: 0.41 MByte (WARNING: requested 4.00 MByte) ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 3] local IPclient port 50563 connected with IPserver port 5001 [ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth [ 3] 0.0-60.0 sec 674 MBytes 11.2 MBytes/sec
Here are the explanations associated with the different arguments:
- -l : by default the iperf tool uses a 8KB read/write buffer, -l 1M uses a 1MB buffer that gives more realistic results,
- -w : by default the iperf tool uses a 85KB TCP window size, -w 4M uses a 4MB TCP window size that gives more realistic results,
- -f : by default the iperf tool displays results in Mbits/sec, -f M changes that to MBytes/sec,
- -t : by default the iperf tool uses 10-second duration period, -t 60 changes that to 60-second duration period.
Additional Resources
You can also read this article about the iperf tool.
In addition, you can read this tutorial about measuring Internet speed with Speedtest-cli.
VMware released an open source benchmarking tool for virtualized infrastructure called Weathervane.
Recent Comments