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I need a tool to stress test our network in between two machines.

The app should send out a packet to machine 2, machine 2 should send it back, machine 1 verifys the packet is correct, generates a new packet and the process starts all over.

Anyone know of such an app?

shaiss
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  • mind letting us know what type of machines you're using? until then we're all left guessing which answer is best. – Patrick R Feb 12 '10 at 13:40

5 Answers5

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You want iperf. It's super tiny, cross platform, and dead simple to use.

jamieb
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2

If you are talking about 2 Windows boxes, I like NTTTCP:

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/network/TCP_tool.mspx

NTttcp is a multithreaded, asynchronous application that sends and receives data between two or more endpoints and reports the network performance for the duration of the transfer. It is essentially a Winsock-based port of the ttcp tool that measures networking performance in terms of bytes transferred per second and CPU cycles per byte. Because it can be difficult to diagnose a system's overall performance without dividing the system into smaller subsystems, NTttcp allows users to narrow the focus of their testing and investigation to just the networking subsystem.

TheCleaner
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1

It depends on what protocol you want to "stress test".

Ping (as already mentioned) for ICMP, but this is primarily for establishing that you have some sort of connectivity.

To load a network and see how fast it will go, TTCP (PCATTCP if on windows: http://www.pcausa.com/Utilities/ttcpdown1.htm) as long as your protocol is TCP/IP.

Also MTR is a great command for troubleshooting intermittent connectivity issues. If on windows, PingPlotter (not as robust as MTR).

Community
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SvrGuy
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0

This is exactly what "ping" does.

I would bet a hundred dollars your system already has ping installed!

Note that most versions of ping in modern releases have a flag that lets you set a "data pattern" for detecting specific bit errors.

The following is from the ping man-page:

   -p pattern
          You  may  specify  up to 16 â?~â?~padâ?Tâ?T bytes to fill out the packet
          you send.  This is useful for diagnosing data-dependent problems
          in  a network.  For example, -p ff will cause the sent packet to
          be filled with all ones.

Generally, sending all ones or all zeros will flesh out a hardware problem that has to do with the dropping of bits.

RT

Richard T
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I recommend IXChariot. It can reproduce the flows of your app, on your ports. Simple to use and pretty cost effective for an all software implementation of a network test tool.

IxChariot Website

I don't sell it. I don't service it. I just find it to be an enormously cool and useful tool

James Pulley
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