Testing Gbps port speed

[yshinde]

HI,

I need help on testing Gbps port speed. I found that FTP is most commonly used to check the throughput but I dont think that this is a best tool to test port speed. Assume that I have two PCs with Gbps ports connected to Cisco switch 6500 having 8 port GBIC module, so PC to PC I have Gbps channel.

Thanks

YOGI

[harveyl]

Yogi,

The first thing that comes to mind is that if you really want to hammer the gig link between 2 Cisco boxes you will need more than 2 PCs because the typical Intel PC PCI 2.1 bus with a gig card will not yeild more than an average of 400 - 600 Mbps throughput due to the PCI bus being a bottleneck. You might want 4 sending PCs and 4 Receiving PCs to make sure you are saturating the link between the boxes.

Leroy

[csthomas]

There is some nice freeware for generating traffic and messuring bandwidth. See http://dast.nlanr.net/Projects/Iperf/

/Chris Thomas, UCLA

[yshinde]

Thanks a lot guys, actual scenario has HP servers with Gbps NICs, to saturate this link system architecture should also deliver similar throughput out of it. This is my argument, but not having tol to prove it.

Thanks for the help.

YOGI