10Gb iPerf kit?

Sun Dec 7 16:48:47 UTC 2014

> From: pete at fiberphone.co.nz
> Subject: Re: 10Gb iPerf kit?
> Date: Sun, 7 Dec 2014 09:24:41 +1300
> To: nanog at nanog.org
> 
> On 11/11/2014, at 1:35 PM, Randy Carpenter <rcarpen at network1.net> wrote:
> 
> > I have not tried doing that myself, but the only thing that would even be possible that I know of is thunderbolt.
> > A new MacBook Pro and one of these maybe: http://www.sonnettech.com/product/echoexpresssel_10gbeadapter.html
> 
> Or one of these ones for dual-10Gbit links (one for out of band management or internet?):
> 
> 	http://www.sonnettech.com/product/twin10g.html
> 
> I haven't tried one myself, but they're relatively cheap (for 10gig) so not that much outlay to grab one and try it (esp if you already have an Apple laptop you can test with).
> 
How would you use it? with iperf still?I don't think you will go nearly close to 14.8Mpps per port this way.Unless you are talking about bandwidth testing with full sized packet frames and low pps rate.
I personally tested a 1Gbit/s port over a MBP retina 15 thunderbot gbe with BCM5701 chipset. I had only 220kpps on a single TX flow.Later I tried another adapter with a marvel yukon mini port. Had better pps rate, but nothing beyond 260kpps.

> I've done loads of 1Gbit testing using the entry-level MacBook Air and a Thunderbolt Gigabit Ethernet adapter though, and I disagree with Saku's statement of 'You cannot use UDPSocket like iperf does, it just does not work, you are lucky if you reliably test 1Gbps'. I find iperf testing at 1Gbit on Mac Air with Thunderbolt Eth extremely reliable (always 950+mbit/sec TCP on a good network, and easy to push right to the 1gbit limit with UDP.
Again, with 64byte packet size? Or are you talking MTU?
With MTU size you can try whatever you want and it will seem to be reliable. A wget/ftp download of a 1GB file will provide similar results, but I dont think this is useful anyway since it won't test anything close to rfc2544 or at least an ordinary internet traffic profile with a mix of 600bytes pkg size combined with a lower rate of smaller packets (icmp/udp, ping/dns/ntp/voice/video).
I am also interested in a cheap and reliable method to test 10GbE connections. So far I haven't found something I trust.
> 
> Pete
>