Throughput rate testing configurations

[security]

Steve Bertrand wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> I see what I believe to be less-than-adequate communication 
> performance between many devices in parts of our network.
>
> Can someone recommend software (and config recommendations if 
> possible) that I can implement to test both throughput and pps 
> reliably, initially/primarily in a simple host-sw-host configuration?
>
> Perhaps I'm asking too much, but I'd like to have something that can 
> push the link to it's absolute maximum capacity (for now, up to 1Gbps) 
> for a long sustained time, that I can just walk away from and let it 
> do it's work, and review the reports later where it had to scale down 
> due to errors.
>
> What I'm really trying to achieve is:
>
> - test the link between hosts alone
> - throw in a switch
> - test the link while r/w to disk
> - test the link while r/w to GELI disk
> - test the link with oddball MTU sizes
>
Iperf or netperf are probably what you're looking for.  Both try real 
had NOT to tweak other subsystems while they run, so if you want to 
throw disk activity in, you'll need to run another tool or roll your own 
to create disk activity.  You probably don't want to run them for 
extended periods in a production network.  Depending on the adapters at 
each end, you may or may not be able to drive the link to saturation or 
alter frame size.  The Intel  adapters I've seen allow jumbo frames, and 
generally good performance (as opposed to say the realtek).  It's also 
useful to have a managed switch in between so you can look at the 
counters on it.

jim