BWPing
| Developer(s) | Oleg Derevenetz |
|---|---|
| Stable release | 1.4 / June 9, 2011 |
| Written in | C |
| Operating system | Cross-platform |
| Available in | English |
| Type | Network traffic simulation |
| License | BSD license |
| Website | bwping.sourceforge.net |
BWPing is a tool to measure bandwidth and response times between two hosts using Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) echo request/echo reply mechanism. It does not require any special software on the remote host. The only requirement is the ability to respond on ICMP echo request messages.
Contents |
[edit] Command syntax
bwping [-t timeout] [-u bufsize] [-r reporting_period] [-T tos] -b kbps -s pktsize -v volume target
Available options are:
- -t - Sets the response timeout in seconds. Default value is one second.
- -u - Sets the send/receive buffer size in bytes. Default value will be automatically calculated based on transfer speed, packet size and host timer accuracy.
- -r - Sets the interval time in seconds between periodic bandwidth, RTT, and loss reports. If zero, there will be no periodic reports (default).
- -T - Sets the TOS value of outgoing ip packet. Default value is zero.
- -b - Sets the transfer speed in kilobits per second.
- -s - Sets the packet size in bytes.
- -v - Sets the volume to transfer in bytes.
[edit] License
This utility is available under BSD License.
[edit] Problems and issues
Although BWPing does not require any special software on the remote host (only the ability to respond on ICMP echo request messages), there are some special requirements to network infrastructure, local and remote host performance:
- There should be no ICMP echo request/reply filtering on the network; this includes Quality of Service (QoS) mechanisms (which often affects ICMP) at any point in the testing path.
- Local host should have enough CPU resources to send ICMP echo request messages with given rate, and remote host should quickly respond on these messages and should have no ICMP bandwidth limiting turned on.
If some of these requirements are not satisfied then the measurement results will be inadequate or fail completely. In general, for testing bandwidth where QoS is implemented, always test with traffic that matches the QoS class to be tested.
[edit] See also
- iperf: A tool for TCP/UDP bandwidth measurement.
- ttcp: Another tool for network bandwidth measurement.
- Measuring network throughput
