Ethernet Cable Benchmark

[amin.a.nakhjavani]

I'm doing a research on how the length of Ethernet cables will affect the file transfer speed. But the problem that I have is that I'm looking for an application that can give me the max and/or min and/or average speed during the transfer. In other words I if I could get a the graph that normally shows the transfer speed on the windows 8 when moving files, I would have all I needed. I have set up a network between two two laptops using different sizes of Ethernet cables, n that's the two end of the network basically. Can you suggest an application that can do that for me?

[Samfisher]

I'm doing a research on how the length of Ethernet cables will affect the file transfer speed. But the problem that I have is that I'm looking for an application that can give me the max and/or min and/or average speed during the transfer. In other words I if I could get a the graph that normally shows the transfer speed on the windows 8 when moving files, I would have all I needed. I have set up a network between two two laptops using different sizes of Ethernet cables, n that's the two end of the network basically. Can you suggest an application that can do that for me?

 

Assuming both laptops are gigabit ready, and that you aren't on a RAID or something, you'll never saturate your NIC, and thus be bottlenecked by your storage solution rather than any length of cable IMHO.

[Tedster]

You'll need two machines - one with a large amount of RAM. Create a RAMDISK using a free tool and make sure it's respectable in size.

Set up the drive as shared across the network. Mount it as a network drive on the other machine.

Then use CrystalDiskMark on the other machine to read and write to the RAMDISK over the network. The bottleneck should always be the NICs or the cables.

[Tedster]

@amin.a.nakhjavani please follow your topics. Press the 'follow this topic' button at the top-right of the page. This means you will be notified immediately when someone replies.

[amin.a.nakhjavani]

@Tedster I actually found a way that's fairly easier. This app called PassMark Network Test basically gives me the TCP of the network between to clients. But if I really need to take into consideration the effect of RAM and other parts, your way would be much better. As in for now, I think I don't need my data to be as accurate, but latter on I think that my advisor will want me to try the other method.

Thanks anyways.

[Tedster]

@Tedster I actually found a way that's fairly easier. This app called PassMark Network Test basically gives me the TCP of the network between to clients. But if I really need to take into consideration the effect of RAM and other parts, your way would be much better. As in for now, I think I don't need my data to be as accurate, but latter on I think that my advisor will want me to try the other method.

Thanks anyways.

I suggested my method because it would alleviate storage bottlenecks. You wouldn't be testing the speed of the ram - it's just that on most machines you can get several gigabytes a second on a RAMDisk, which is far better speeds than you'd find elsewhere in the system.

[Sidiox]

you could also use something like iperf: https://iperf.fr/

I don't really know what limits it, but I think it just uses RAM, although I could be mistaken.

It also allows you to test stuff like parrallel streams and both ways at the same time, this in particular could be very useful when looking at different lengths of cables. 

Also take a look at Netlimiter 3 or 4, it gives you a nice graph of network transferring speeds over time (and if you use linux I suggest using either darkstat or bmon, either one will work quite well, darkstat is a bit more polished but non cli)

Another very important point is that you should connect the Gigabit capable machines directly (using a crossover plug) and not having a router/switch in between, a switch could work as long as it can sustain a 2 gigabit speed for longer (most routers might have some trouble with this considering they might just bridge the interfaces which is quite taxing on the systems) 

 

@amin.a.nakhjavani