How to install and use iPerf
What is iPerf?
iPerf is an open source network performance tool. It creates TCP and UDP network streams between hosts and counts the maximum bandwidth used in the connection which is then reported to the user.
It is a fantastic tool for measuring network speed and capacity and is quite straight forward to use. For further in depth reading on iPerf please use the following resource iPerf FAQ
iPerf vs iPerf3…what is the difference?
Without confusing matters too much iPerf that is used today is actually iPerf2 but referred to as simply iPerf. iPerf3 was built from scratch in 2014 from the original code. iPerf3 has Linux and Windows variants whereas iPerf is only available for Linux.
How do I use iPerf/iPerf3?
Firstly you must install iPerf on your operating system:
CentOS/Almalinux/Rocklinux/Redhat:
yum install iperf
Debian/Ubuntu:
apt-get install iperf
Once installed you can then run tests to an iPerf server. We have over 100 instances of iPerf running here at fractionservers for you to test:
iperf: iperf.fractionservers.com with ports 5100 to 5200 usable
iperf3: iperf.fractionservers.com with ports 5300 to 5350 usable
To perform a test to our iPerf server (remember you can use any port from 5100 to 5200):
iperf -c iperf.fractionservers.com -p 5100
To perform a test to our iPerf3 server (remember you can use any port from 5300 to 5350):
iperf3 -c iperf.fractionservers.com -p 5300
The output of the test will be similar to the following and will report back the speed achieved during the test
------------------------------------------------------------
Client connecting to iperf.fractionservers.com, TCP port 5100
TCP window size: 45.0 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
[ 3] local 77.74.192.36 port 50616 connected with iperf.fractionservers.com port 5100
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[ 3] 0.0-10.1 sec 1.27 GBytes 1.08 Gbits/secHere we can see 1.27GBytes was transferred within 10 seconds and the maximum bandwidth achieved would be 1.08Gb/s
