Open Source Network Monitoring System

Sometimes we want to know how our network is if there are a lot of user using it. Will be there any congestion? How soon? Where is the bottle neck?

Using netperf, which was developed by HP engineer - Rick Jones, at least we can simulate it. Netperf using client server methods. And we can use it either in linux/unix or windows. For windows version you can download in netperf website and compile it or you can download the binary version here.

After unpack it. You will have two files (for windows version, i haven’t tried for other version). netclient.exe and netserver.exe. Let say, you have a webserver. You want to simulate how is the network performance from webserver to the client. you will run the netserver.exe in the web server ( from what i read, it is possible if the server is in linux, and then you run the linux version of netserver).

Next, in your pc you will run netclient.exe like this:

netclient.exe -H webserver_ip_or_hostname

The output will be like this (depend on your test method actually):

netclient.exe -H 10.0.8.81
TCP STREAM TEST to 10.0.8.81
Recv   Send    Send
Socket Socket  Message  Elapsed
Size   Size    Size     Time     Throughput
bytes  bytes   bytes    secs.    10^6bits/sec

8192   8192   8192    10.00       3.39

There are a lot of other options you can find it here. Netperf support UDP, TCP and SCTP test. Also support for IPv4 and IPv6 traffic. And we can test using bulk file transfer or we want to measure request/response performance.  You can read the full manual at here. Happy testing. Tell me the result.