Measuring network performance
network | n0str0m0 | (0)
FreeBSD includes several benchmarking suites in the ports collection. One of these suites is netperf, developed by HP. It allows measuring several network parameters using two programs: the server and the client.
First things first: let us install netperf.
% cd /usr/ports/benchmarks/netperf && make install clean
Once the software has been successfully compiled (it does not take long) we can bring the server up:
$ netserver
Starting netserver at port 12865
Starting netserver at hostname 0.0.0.0 port 12865 and family AF_UNSPEC
Notice that you can launch the server as a regular user. Now, we are ready to run our test:
$ netperf -t TCP_STREAM
TCP STREAM TEST from ...