Can software traffic generator generate 100 Mbps traffic?

Question

Can software traffic generators like iperf etc can generate 100mbps traffic? else is there any software generators which can produce such high rates ?

Regards, Mithun

Answer 1

Yes, iPerf can easily max out even Gb connections. The example above by mkudlacek is, in fact, a maxed out connection, minus losses to TCP overhead.

------------------------------------------------------------
Client connecting to proton.cw, TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 16.0 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
[  3] local 10.2.0.16 port 40045 connected with 10.2.0.2 port 5001
[  3]  0.0-10.0 sec  1.09 GBytes    940 Mbits/sec

Answer 2

Iperf will generate up to a Gigabit or so, depending on hardware. If you want to max out 10 Gbit connections (or above), or use smaller than MTU packets you will have to use kernel modules such as pktgen.

Answer 3

it almost can, here's the proof:

------------------------------------------------------------
Server listening on TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 85.3 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
[  4] local 10.0.0.2 port 5001 connected with 10.0.0.5 port 46844
[ ID] Interval       Transfer     Bandwidth
[  4]  0.0- 4.5 sec  50.0 MBytes  94.1 Mbits/sec

Computers are connected via 100MBps LAN.

Best regards, Martin