WAN speed testing tool needed

tallyrich

For the longest time I've used a tool called LAN Speedtest with great, very accurate results. Of late the results have been all over the board.

Here's what I've tried.

LAN Speedtest

jPerf - works, but doesn't seem to really replicate real world traffic

Windows file copy and paste - works, but you have to use that windows "chart" and kind of guess at what you are getting

FTP transfers - works, but again FTP doesn't really replicate real world traffic

The problem that we are looking to resolve is that we have several connections on which users complain of slow speeds (and it's true, we can watch them work and see the performance) One of the lines is a Gig connection so even if it is "slow" it should perform pretty well for the 20 or so people that it is supporting.

So, what are your recommendations for measuring the actual bandwidth available on a connection?

RichardLetts

If this is a 'carrier ethernet' type connection then we use exfo equipment to verify performance at Layer-2.

http://www.exfo.com/products/quality-service-assessment/service-assurance-platform/bu5-verifier-series/bv-10

we've found that there can be unexpected bottlenecks inside vendor networks, and sending them a  ITU-T Y.1564 test report normally stops them pointing at our dubious test methodology using iperf

for user-experience testing I find that www.speedtest.net works pretty well, and you can licence this to run locally.

Further aside client AV/firewall software can really impact the performance of these tests, hence why we use dedicated test equipment