Use Iperf to Measure Network Throughput (Bandwidth) on Windows or Linux

Iperf was developed by NLANR/DAST as a modern alternative for measuring maximum TCP and UDP bandwidth performance. Iperf allows the tuning of various parameters and UDP characteristics. Iperf reports bandwidth, delay jitter, datagram loss.

  • Install iperf on Windows – just download, unzip and run iperf.exe.
  • Install iperf on Ubuntu:
    sudo apt-get install iperf
Iperf supports several options, but generally you would run it on one device as a “server” and another as a “client.”
To launch iperf in server mode just enter iperf -s at the terminal.  It will report, “Server listening on TCP port 5001. . .”

From another system launch iperf in client mode with iperf -c <server IP>. By default Iperf will run a 10 second test and report amount of data transferred and bandwidth speed.

Note: Iperf can be used to test LAN speeds as well as over the Internet.

Download Iperf and get more information from SourceForge.

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