Gigabit speed test anybody?

Frank Bulk frnkblk at iname.com
Thu Mar 26 04:09:03 UTC 2009


If you're turning up a 10 GigE circuit, as a customer I would be asking for
that circuit to be tested with some modern tools such as the JDSU T-BERD.
For the price you're probably paying, it's probably not unreasonable to have
it as part of the turn-up fee.

Frank

-----Original Message-----
From: Robert M. Enger [mailto:enger at enger.us] 
Sent: Wednesday, March 25, 2009 10:23 PM
To: ernst at easystreet.com
Cc: nanog at nanog.org
Subject: Re: Gigabit speed test anybody?


I turned-up a pair of 10GigE circuits a while back (with a different, 
unnamed carrier).
They didn't perform too well.  When I pushed them for assistance with 
testing, they revealed that they had multiple IPERF transponders 
scattered throughout their network.
They were not open to the public, but could be made available for short 
periods of time (timer-based, requiring repeated re-authorization to use 
them for an extended period).

It seems likely that Level3 has similar (or superior) testing 
facilities.  A call to some account executives may be required to open 
the kimono. 

Separately, the Super computer centers used to have speed-test servers 
installed adjacent to their border routers.  They were dedicated, tuned 
hosts specifically for speed testing.  One/more of them might be willing 
to help you out.  However, unless one of them happens to use Level3 for 
commercial transit, your performance will be gated by the excess 
intervening network(s) and under all circumstances, by the competing 
traffic on their access circuit.

Finally, I echo the sentiments about avoiding disk I/O.
If you do use FTP download for testing, you may wish to write the local 
output to the null device.  Some ftp clients allow the null device to be 
specified as the local output file when downloading files.  On XP 
command-line FTP, the device "Nul:" is accepted.  On Un*x it is 
/dev/null.   The command-line client on Server 2003 et al does not seem 
to accept Nul as the local destination file when downloading.  (anyone 
know the correct magic?)    Remember to download multiple times; 
assuming the source server has enough ram, it will cache the file in 
memory during the first download and successive downloads in rapid 
succession should be essentially memory-to-memory (if you're using a 
null device on the receiving end)

Bob







Rick Ernst wrote:
> Resent from my subscribed address. Hopefully this isn't a dupe to anybody.
> ---------------------------------------
>
>
> I'm working on turning up our first GigE connection (400mbs CIR) and the
> various online speedtests I'm aware of choke after about 100Mbs or so.
>
> Does anybody know of testing sites that can handle higher bandwidth, or
> have an ftp host or similar to test against?
>
> I'm connected to Level3, backhauled to Seattle, WA.
>
> Thanks,
> Rick
>
>
>
>   






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