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Our office internet typically has about 25-30 computers connected. For an upcoming event, we will have to support about 100 connections, mostly via wireless, for a few days. I'd really like to test that kind of load before the event.

Is there a way to simulate a number of concurrent wireless connections to do some load testing?

Derek Kurth
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  • possible duplicate of [Can you help me with my capacity planning?](http://serverfault.com/questions/384686/can-you-help-me-with-my-capacity-planning) – Wesley Oct 25 '14 at 01:08

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The problem is, as far as I know, one wireless adapter can only connect to one wireless network, at a time. You'll need as many wireless adapters for the extent of the stress testing you want to conduct.

Izzy
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    Have a LAN party at work, invite all your friends over, tell them to bring wireless adapters, and their iPods, and any other wireless device they have ;) – Izzy Sep 21 '09 at 20:16
  • That sounds like a good idea whether it helps me load test or not! :) – Derek Kurth Sep 21 '09 at 20:19
  • Maybe you could even get your work to pay for pizza, in the interests of testing their infrastructure for the "upcoming event". They could even write the cost off to the event budget ;) – Izzy Sep 21 '09 at 20:23
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You could set up a ping test on each machine with large packets. This would flood the network with traffic and could be used as a simulation for multiple connections. It's not perfect, but it might give you some peace of mind.

ping X.X.X.X -t -l 1024

This will send 1024 byte packets continuously to your server IP.

Lucille
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  • There's a significant difference between testing the wireless network's capacity for multiple client connections and network load (e.g. bandwidth, number of TCP connections, etc.). The ping test would accomplish the latter, not the former. – I say Reinstate Monica Oct 25 '14 at 14:39
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I know it's not perfect but if you have a server or pc strong enough you install virtualbox on it an create the number of vms you want to test and and use your WiFi adapter as the network card for each of them...

Or better yet but x usb WiFi ish dongles and connect each of them to a laptop and connect... You could use iperf to test speeds

casper
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