Bandwidth Speed Testing >10 Mbit/s

By jrichard • August 18, 2009 • Filed in: IT Management

Nearly everyone knows about Speakeasy’s Speed Test these days. It’s useful in a pinch, but I’ve ran into apparent upper bounds in it (topping out at ~10 Mbit/s when there is definitely more throughput possible) and it doesn’t always provide the information needed for the job. It’s also not useful if you want to test between two of your own endpoints (example: a desktop and an private server).

Here are several of the other tools I found useful in these situations:

Stanford University Network Diagnostic Tool server
and

UC Santa Cruz Network Diagnostic Tool server These are hosted so they are best for testing general Internet speed from a single host to/from the Internet. They go up to higher bitrates than Speakeasy’s Speedtest and give a bit more info.

JPerf (xjperf) Full tool w/ GUI. Download the zip. Java-based. You can see some screenshots and some tutorials on the GUI version (1/2 way thru the article) here. No installation req’d but JRE must be installed. In theory cross-platform but best under Windows. Use this if you need to test between two of your own endpoints.

iperf This is what JPerf is based on. Command-line only. Cross-platform but best under Linux. Wikipedia entry. Use this if you need to test between two of your own endpoints.

Ookla Net Metrics Line Quality Test. The link is to the (functioning) demo. It’s hosted so same limitations as Standard/UC Santa Cruz Network Diagnostic tool but gives good info. But they have a version you can place on your own servers, including a free 30-day trial… which is often enough for a lot of ad hoc testing situations.

Parting Comments

Hosted tools are useful but are not entirely accurate. Run them multiple times on different days to get a ballpark idea of the performance between your source and location of the hosted tools.

For best results, run both ends (client and server) on your own equipment. Using local tools, such as iperf, jperf, or installing the trial (or buying) of Ookla will give the most accurate results.