Utility to measure TCP/UDP network transfer rate?

Fjodor2001

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Feb 6, 2010
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Hi,

I want to measure the network transfer rate between two computers. I don't want the measurement to be limited by e.g. hard drive speed, so sending a file via FTP is not what I'm looking for. I just want a utility that sends data via a TCP-stream and/or UDP from the client utility running on one computer to the server utility running on another computer.

So, based on the description above, what Windows utility you would recommend for this?

Thanks!
 

Fjodor2001

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Feb 6, 2010
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Thanks!

* I downloaded the free Qcheck utility. However, it seems the max data size that can be entered when testing TCP throughput is 1 MB. I guess that is a limitation of the free Qcheck utility compared to the commercial IxChariot utility, or? Still, will 1 MB be enough to provide a reliable measurement?

* Also, I tried another similar utility called "netperf". When running it from localhost to localhost (i.e. NOT between two computers) using the default settings (i.e. 8192 bytes for both recv socket size, send socket size, and send message size) I got the following TCP measurements :

On a Core2Duo E6600 / 6 GM RAM: ~1800 mbit/s
On an Atom D510 / 2 GB RAM: ~600 mbit/s

To me this seems awfully low, or!!? Also, does it mean that there is no chance of the Atom D510 delivering a throughput of ~1 Gbps on a GigabitEthernet LAN? Or does the "netperf" utility not provide reliable measurements for some reason?
 

Fjodor2001

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Feb 6, 2010
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Thanks!

I just tried NetCPS, and got the following measurements when running on the Core2Duo E6600 computer via localhost:

Code:
c:\Temp>NetCPS.exe localhost -m1000
NetCPS 1.0 - Entering client mode. Press ^C to quit
Connecting to 127.0.0.1 port 4455... Connected!
---> CPS 139960800.00  KPS: 136680.47  MPS: 133.48
Avrg CPS 137446064.00  KPS: 134224.67  MPS: 131.08
Peek CPS 141755328.00  KPS: 138432.94  MPS: 135.19
Done. 1048576000 Kb transferred in 7.63 seconds.
As I understand it MPS means MegabytePerSecond, so 130 MPS => 8*130=1040 Mbit/s. That is even lower than according to NetPerf (which measured it to ~1800 Mbit/s)! Isn't that an awfully low transfer rate for a localhost connection!!?
 

Fjodor2001

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Feb 6, 2010
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FYI: I just tested the network transfer rate between the two computers mentioned above (instead of via localhost as before). When using NetPerf and specifying that the send and receive buffers should be 100.000 bytes, I got a transfer rate of 950 mbit/s. Quite nice!
 

Fallen Kell

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Oct 9, 1999
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The default send/receive TCP buffers out of the box on just about every OS is woefully inadequate for current 100mbit or greater speeds. Most of the defaults are based on ISDN speeds (128kbits).