best free software to measure intranet speed

[dshodson]

i currently have a dd-wrt 802.11g wireless network in my house which works fine for internet but im adding NAS and want to push video throughtout the house. i want to measure my current network speed as i try to determine if ill use powerline or 802.11n or both in the house. my wife wont let me drill knock down walls to put wired unfortunately. in any event, what is the best free software to evaluate my intranet speeds?

thanks

d

 

[Crusty]

iperf

http://sourceforge.net/projects/iperf/

 

[JackMDS]

http://www.ezlan.net/faq.html#transfer

 

[dshodson]

thanks, i used q check
i get 10.3 Mbps as my TCP throughput
i recently purchaed the HP MediaSmart Server EX485 and per reviews it performs best on a gigabit network. It seems it can provide a throuput of about 50. im trying to upgrade my system to make that happen. Currently i have a buffalo router flashed to ddwrt. the computers im testing througput say they have very good connection and typically at 54 if not then 36. Do u think i could get close to 50 with a new N router or am i daydreaming?

thanks

D

 

[Madwand1]

Originally posted by: dshodson
i recently purchaed the HP MediaSmart Server EX485 and per reviews it performs best on a gigabit network. It seems it can provide a throuput of about 50. im trying to upgrade my system to make that happen. Currently i have a buffalo router flashed to ddwrt. the computers im testing througput say they have very good connection and typically at 54 if not then 36. Do u think i could get close to 50 with a new N router or am i daydreaming?

You could probably get 50 Mb/s with an 802.11n router, but your server can go much faster with wired -- its "50" is probably 50 MB/s = 400 Mb/s. This is significantly faster than actual wireless and powerline network performance, despite the "300 Mb/s" marketing, etc. With luck, 802.11n can hit around 100 Mb/s wired networking speed, but gigabit wired is the better solution for file servers and large file transfers.

Getting a gigabit 802.11n router could get give you a taste of both options. Adding an inexpensive gigabit switch could get you wired gigabit for not much cost. Of course, you'd have to have gigabit NICs on each end of the transfer to get gigabit speeds. But even 100 Mb/s wired would be much faster in practice than 802.11g, and even much faster than 802.11n in many cases / environments.