stress-test eth0 [solved]

[theYinYeti]

Is there any way I can use as much network bandwidth as possible for a minute or so, so that I can verify the network ability?

 

So far, my ADSL connexion has been fast, and I've frequently seen a download go at 1MB/s (8Mb).

Since 2 days ago however, network seems to be slow: streaming radio is mostly broken, ganttproject-2.0.2-1mer.noarch.rpm is currently being downloaded with wget at 1KB/s on average, when not stalled... and I've disabled images in FF.

 

Could you give me some directions on what to execute, and what to look at?

 

Yves.

[emmanuel_uk]

You have been around for a while so you must have some ideas...

Are you worried upload or download or both?

 

What is the architecture of the LAN, or is this a single PC

 

Interesting question

Would just using a laptop and a cable and ping be enough

to test stress eth0 (provided firewall, kernel etc ok for icmp)

You could easily script ping with usleep

 

there is a distro called stresslinux, cannot remember if does eth0

Had difficulty using it because of wrong mobo

[theYinYeti]

The setup is:

PC<->eth0 <==> eth0<->ADSL box<->wan0 <==> ISP

The ADSL box acts as a router for my LAN; only my PC is on the LAN at the moment, though.

 

Unfortunately, even though I know my way with Linux and computing, and to a lesser degree with networking, I know next to nothing about network analysis in case of performance problem, as is now the case.

 

I can't say if upload is OK or not, however I know that download is too slow: even without images, or using the links browser, loading a MUB page is almost half a minute long! And I've begun installing links-hack through urpmi, and here's the status line:

41% of 2585k completed, ETA = 0:26:02, speed = 912

(I've had minutes long of "speed = 0" before that line...)

 

Based on your post (I saw ICMP), I tried running a simple "ping mozilla.org", which said:

64 bytes from moz.org01.nslb.sj.mozilla.com (63.245.209.11): icmp_seq=16 ttl=234 time=198 ms

several times. I'm not sure about the computation, but would that mean 323B/s ? (64B/0.198s) If so, then it is indeed slow!

 

Is there anything I can do to find out where the problem lies?

 

Yves.

[daniewicz]

There is a TCP/Web100 network diagnostic tool located here: http://web100.rit.edu:7123/

 

Running this diagnostic requires java. You can test the status of your computer and network connection.

[Mhn]

there is a program called tptest, which you can measure the speed with, it's in Mandrivas repositories but I haven't tried it yet in linux, only in winlose.

 

Edit: It's not in mdv2007, but only in 2006

Edited November 24, 2006 by Mhn

[theYinYeti]

@daniewicz:

Reading the status bar, the outbound test runs fine for a little less than 20 seconds, and then the inbound test begins, and nothing happens anymore. I tried waiting several minutes, but the page is dead... only closing the tab has any effect.

 

@Mhn:

I'll try and find this tool.

[Mhn]

tptest project page

[ianw1974]

There's also http://www.adslguide.org.uk which you can run the bandwidth speed test from here. Requires java though.

[theYinYeti]

Thanks ian. Unfortunately the applet hangs during the test the same way the other applet did.

 

As for tptest, I installed the latest sourceforge rpm (intended for rh9) for the server, and I compiled the latest source for the client. The example from the manuel, ran on server localhost, just fails: each test end with "Failed test" (or something like this).

 

I wonder what happens, so suddenly!

 

Yves.

[emmanuel_uk]

I know nothing about pre-failure of nic card

I suppose using/ borrowing a laptop you can ascertain if the copper cable

house-to telephone box is not "damaged"

 

Did you check you have no rootkit, no rogue process, nothing in the firewall logs

 

here

PING mozilla.org (63.245.209.11) 56(84) bytes of data.

64 bytes from moz.org01.nslb.sj.mozilla.com (63.245.209.11): icmp_seq=1 ttl=235 time=164 ms

 

so 198ms fo you is telline me the connection is fine

 

A spare nic card is a few bucks/euros...

 

Hope we can help you more

Will rattle my head

[daniewicz]

@daniewicz: Reading the status bar, the outbound test runs fine for a little less than 20 seconds, and then the inbound test begins, and nothing happens anymore. I tried waiting several minutes, but the page is dead... only closing the tab has any effect.

 

Shrug. The link is working for me. I am using Mandriva 2005 and Java 1.5.0_06-b05

[theYinYeti]

Thanks to all who helped me!!!!

 

It seems the modem was the cause. After a good amount of lost hours and anger, I finally thought of looking at the modem's diagnostics page: it showed occasional (not permanent but quite often still) FAIL status for either:

- access to first hop (internet provider), or

- ping first DNS server.

In such case, it said: reboot the modem.

 

So did I.

 

It works.

 

Yves.