Testing network performance with iperf

iperf is a handy tool to check network performance between 2 computers. You can install this tool using your distro’s package manager.

There are 2 modes this tool runs in. Server and Client, you will need to run it in server mode on one end and client mode on the other end.

Server usage:

iperf -s

Client usage:

iperf -c <host/ip>

Basically you want to run it with the -s option on the server side and the -c option on the client side. On the client end you will also need to provider the server’s hostname or IP address.

Here’s an example of what it looks like when run.

------------------------------------------------------------
Client connecting to 192.168.32.50, TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 22.9 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
[  3] local 192.168.32.152 port 40885 connected with 192.168.32.50 port 5001
[ ID] Interval       Transfer     Bandwidth
[  3]  0.0-10.0 sec   897 MBytes   752 Mbits/sec