I am looking for some tools to help me test the performance of a Cisco Catalyst IP network. I have downloaded IPerf and this seems to offer what I am looking for - it is a client/server application and offers UDP streaming at user configurable rates. So I can effectively set up a Server that sits and listens on a UDP port for incoming data and reports back packet loss, jitter etc. The client can send UDP packets to this server at different rates and I should have some meaningful statistics as well - all sounds great.
Now, for a quick test I set up a Server (Compaq Proliant ML330 with Compaq/Intel 10/100 NIC (latest drivers etc). I then set up an IBM laptop with an integrated Intel 10/100 NIC. Both NICs and the switch ports are set to Auto-Negotiate and the reported speed/duplex is 100/Full. If I run the IPerf Client on the laptop I cannot seem to run over 10Mbs without errors being logged. At the moment whilst I am testing I have the 2 PC's on the same VLAN and on the same switch so there shouldn't be any routing 'delays'. I am running Windows 2000 on both machines.
I did some testing recently with Linux as the OS that seemed to perform better but my Linux/Unix skills are pretty non-existent, plus the laptops our guys use all run Windows 2000. I really just want to test end-to-end connectivity and ensure there are no errors/packet drops through the network path. I kmow something like Smartbits would be better but I am not sure we will have one available and I would like to make some generic tests/scripts that I can use as a template for testing.
Thanks
Andy
