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The 6 Best Network Throughput Monitoring and Testing Tools

Monitoring network throughput can help sympathize how your network is performing, enable yous to ameliorate react to bottlenecks, help meliorate network planning, and lead to more effective network troubleshooting. We bear witness y'all the best network throughput monitoring and testing tools.

UPDATED: November 23, 2021

Network throughput is the amount of data that is transmitted through a given network medium over a given amount of fourth dimension.

For example, an Ethernet connexion that has a throughput of 30 Mbps is transferring 30 Megabits per second.

Based on the definition above, we can see that throughput helps u.s.a. sympathize and quantify network performance.

Network performance is ofttimes the difference between a productive 24-hour interval and an unproductive 1. Given that, the demand to measure out and monitor throughput becomes clear.

Here is our list of the best network throughput monitoring and testing tools:

1. SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer Pack EDITOR'S CHOICE Easily monitor network traffic, identify the top talkers on your network, and prioritize bandwidth utilization.
2. ExtraHop Enterprise solution with the ability to automatically notice and correlate network bug
3. Comparitech Speed Exam Gratuitous and simple test that's perfect if you lot just need to bank check one or a handful of devices.
4. Iperf Open up-source tool used for taking active measurements of throughput on a network.
5. NetCPS – freeware bandwidth monitor. NetCPS is a Windows Command Line utility.
6. Netperf – free to utilise and a fairly pop tool for measuring throughput and benchmarking network speeds.

Let's dive into the basics of network throughput so provide an overview of some of the more than popular network throughput monitoring solutions available on the market today. You can besides check out our post on bandwidth monitoring tools and larn about the difference between throughput and bandwidth.

What's the deviation between throughput and bandwidth?

The differences betwixt network throughput and bandwidth can exist confusing to many. This is understandable given how the terms are more often than not used and that they deal with the aforementioned subject (amount of information transmitted over a given medium).

In short, bandwidth is the maximum corporeality of data that can go through a given medium and throughput is the corporeality of data that actually goes through that medium.

If y'all're shopping for internet service, keep in mind you pay your Internet Service Provider (Isp) for bandwidth and get throughput.

In practice, throughput will ever be less than your bandwidth. Additionally, your throughput at a given bespeak in fourth dimension will usually not exist your maximum throughput. For instance, if everyone in the office is streaming high-definition video a lot more data is existence transmitted than if everyone was just sending plain text emails.

I of the nearly helpful means to anticipate bandwidth and throughput is the highway analogy. Bandwidth is the number of lanes on a highway while throughput is the cars traveling on that highway. Calculation lanes (bandwidth) could improve traffic speeds, but information technology wouldn't solve all your speed problems. On a highway, collisions and boring-moving vehicles can boring things down. Similarly, on a network, collisions, latency, and overhead can cause delays that aren't necessarily solved past adding bandwidth.

Measurements of Network Throughput (MB vs Mb, Gigabit speeds etc)

There are multiple abbreviations thrown around when discussing throughput. All the dissimilar measurements somehow refer to an amount of data (usually $.25 or bytes) over a period of time (usually seconds). Agreement what the most popular measurements actually mean can assistance you better empathise throughput. Below is a quick breakdown of some of the common measurements and terminology related to throughput.

• Bit – The smallest size of binary information used past reckoner devices. That is, the private ones and zeros in binary math.
• Byte – 8 bits
• Megabit – 1 million bits
• Megabyte – ane million bytes
• Gigabit – 1 billion $.25
• Gigabyte – 1 billion bytes
• Mbps – Megabits per 2d
• MBps – Megabytes per 2nd
• Gbps – Gigabits per second
• GBps – Gigabytes per second

One of the fundamental takeaways here is: 1 MB is viii times more than i Mb. The same goes for GB vs Gb. Keep that in mind when comparing throughput statistics and ISP service plans.

Impact of latency on throughput

Latency tin can take a big impact on throughput. Latency is the amount of time it takes data to traverse a given path. If nosotros think back to our highway analogy, the corporeality of time information technology takes to travel beyond the highway is latency. That wouldn't matter too much if all traffic was one style, but when you start to think about, y'all begin to sympathize how it can touch throughput. TCP relies heavily on acknowledgments, which means a receiver must acknowledge a sender for the transmissions to proceed. If it takes a long time for the packets to become back to the sender, in that location will exist a lot of wasted time and lower throughput.

High latency can occur for a variety of reasons, from bottlenecks to the number of hops between destinations to concrete distance between sites.

Impact of packet loss on throughput

If a TCP parcel is dropped, information technology will need to be resent. This redundancy negatively impacts throughput. A sender volition know that a packet needs to be resent based on timeouts or lack of acknowledgment for a given package(s). Package loss can occur for a number of reasons including high latency, jitter (inconsistent speeds on a connection), hardware and connection problems, or software bugs.

What throughput should I expect for a given bandwidth?

There'south no i-size-fits-all reply to this question. A number of moving parts bear on throughput, and then every state of affairs is unique. With electric current technology, latency, and packet overhead existence what they are, you won't get speeds that match the bandwidth you purchase from your ISP.

As a "best-case scenario" reference, this CableFree article took a deep dive into maximum network throughput and determined that a ane Gbps Ethernet connectedness has a potential for 94% efficiency (i.e. 940 Mbps). Enabling Colossal Frames bumps the potential up to 99% (990 Mbps).

What tin can measuring network throughput help you do?

In a word: measuring throughput helps you lot resolve complaints nigh the network being "deadening". This is because throughput measurements help you meliorate understand a network connexion and its existent-globe performance. Throughput monitoring can help with:

• Identifying bottlenecks
• Comparing real-world performance to SLAs
• Network design and planning
• Creating baselines
• Troubleshooting

Can you forecast network throughput?

Getting a baseline of your existing throughput volition help yous to spot peaks and troughs in volume. If you don't intend to add together on whatsoever new services to the network, your side by side job will be to ensure that there are is sufficient available capacity for trend growth in traffic volumes. If you are launching an expansion project, then you should expect increased demand on your network infrastructure.

In both cases, it helps to utilize a tool that can replay existent traffic data and also generate extra traffic volumes to check that the bandwidth that you lot take available will exist able to cope with that new demand.

Chapters planning tools such every bit the SolarWinds Menstruation Tool Bundle come in handy in these testing scenarios. The Packet includes 3 tools that work with the Cisco-invented NetFlow v5 system. When you turn on NetFlow capabilities on your Cisco router, information technology will forward all package headers to a collector. You can also utilize NetFlow to query the router and get aggregated data out of it.

The Bundle includes an interface to plough the NetFlow capabilities on your routers on and off. A second utility will replay captured traffic effectually your network and a 3rd tool in the bundle volition generate fake traffic to send around the network, testing the bandwidth capacity of all of your equipment and network software as well.

SolarWinds Flow Tool Bundle Download 100% Costless Tool Parcel

How can you improve network throughput?

With an idea of what throughput is and what affects information technology, nosotros'll now talk about things that can be done to improve throughput. Again, in that location's no one-size-fits-all respond; it'southward important to understand the cause of your throughput problems to effectively address them. Beneath are some mutual methods employed to improve throughput.

• Increase bandwidth – Sometimes simply adding lanes to the highway is what you lot need. This is one of the most obvious solutions, but recollect bandwidth tin be expensive and might non be the root cause of your problems. Also, exist sure to have the network infrastructure in place to back up your bandwidth updates if you go that route. Later on all, a ten Gbps connection doesn't hateful much on a network full of 100 Mbps switches.
• Eliminate bottlenecks – Network bottlenecks are points on a network that causes traffic to slow down. For example, if you update your unabridged network to 1 Gpbs speed, an sometime server with a 10 Mbps network interface may create a clogging.
• Update to fiber – Information on fiber connections move nigh or at the speed of light. Information on copper connections move significantly slower (for those of you into the science, it'southward photon speed vs electron speed). Copper maxes out around 10 Gbps while fiber can attain terabit speeds or higher (check out this Engadget article for an example). While 10 Gbps is fine for nigh networks, fiber is much less susceptible to noise and can cover more footing than a comparable copper run, adding boosted advantages that can assist boost throughput.
• Adjust MTU – Adjusting MTU (Maximum Manual Unit) sizes on a router can lead to improved throughput. For example, larger MTUs can minimize overhead and increase throughput. For more than, check out this NetGear article designed to help y'all optimize the MTU size on a router.
• Apply QoS – Configuring QoS (Quality of Service) on your routers and switches is another manner to improve throughput. QoS can be used to dedicate bandwidth, manage congestion, shape network traffic, and set priorities on network traffic. For a deeper dive on the topic, check out this Cisco document. QoS doesn't necessarily improve your throughput, it can help you brand sure latency-sensitive applications (VOIP, video streaming, etc.) are less affected when things tedious down.
• Use a CDN – A CDN (Content Delivery Network) tin can assist get your content closer to users if you a dealing with a situation where many of your users are far from your servers (e.grand. a website). Therefore, a CDN might be a groovy mode to improve throughput. At the Man Health Projection, we use CloudFlare equally a CDN.

The best network throughput monitoring and testing tools

What should yous look for in a throughput monitoring and testing tool?

Nosotros reviewed the market place for throughput monitoring and testing tools and analyzed the options based on the following criteria:

• A service that can detect total capacity likewise as current load
• The power to communicate with switches and routers through NetFlow and other packet sampling protocols
• A arrangement that shows live throughput statistics per link
• A utility that tests an unabridged path end to stop
• Capacity planning utilities
• A free trial for no-risk cess or a free tool
• A tool that is worth the time to install if it is free or worth the coin if it is charged for

1. SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer Pack (FREE TRIAL)

The SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer Pack is actually two SolarWinds products bundled together: Network Operation Monitor (NPM) and NetFlow Traffic Analyzer (NTA). You can larn more about each of these modules in our NPM and NTA reviews.

In curt, NPM is i of the almost popular pieces of enterprise monitoring software offered past SolarWinds and does a lot of the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) and upwards/down monitoring you would expect from a Network Management System (NMS). Calculation NTA to the mix enables back up for monitoring the various menstruation protocols similar NetFlow, sFlow, jFlow, etc. Combined, these 2 tools go a holistic, feature-rich, throughput monitoring solution.

You tin demo NTA directly from your browser hither. You can likewise download a 30-day free trial of the Network Bandwidth Analyzer Pack which includes both tools.

Pros:

• Supports multiple protocols like NetFlow, great for monitoring Cisco equipment
• Both tools work well alongside each other to help view traffic patterns and bandwidth usage
• Easy to use interface automatically highlights bandwidth hogs and other network traffic outliers
• Scales well, designed for large enterprise networks
• Can view traffic on a per-hop basis, allowing for granular traffic assay

Cons:

• Built for enterprise utilise, not designed for small dwelling networks

2. ExtraHop

ExtraHop is an enterprise-level monitoring solution with support for advanced features like contextual intelligence, forensic investigation, existent-time analytics, and more.

ExtraHop offers monitoring solutions for security, network performance, and the cloud. The department of this enterprise software we're focused on here is its network operation monitoring capabilities.

Ane of the major selling points of ExtraHop's network performance solution is the ability to automatically detect and correlate network problems, which should assistance reduce mean time to resolution. Part its solution includes detailed metrics and charts covering boilerplate bandwidth utilization, average throughput, throughput past protocol, "top talkers" (endpoints with the highest boilerplate throughput), and more than. If you lot're looking for an enterprise-level solution to your throughput monitoring issues, you may want to take a wait at ExtraHop.

Pros:

• Designed for enterprise utilize to assistance system administrators
• Great user interface, comes with an easy to view dark mode
• Automatically detects network issues and provides correlation assist

Cons:

• Must contact for pricing
• Spider web-based managment console could be made more intuitive
• Filtering traffic adequately steep learning curve

Y'all can demo ExtraHop straight from your browser (Contact info is requested, but demo access is given immediately later).

3. Comparitech Speed Test

If you lot need to check the throughput from a given computer or mobile device with a web browser, our very own speed examination is a not bad style to do and then and aid raise money for clemency. Our speed examination volition cheque your current download speed, upload speed, and ping response times. I've found that online speed tests as well are a good style to determine if issues y'all are having with a given app are related to your network speeds or non (e.g. to cheque if you meet Netflix'due south Cyberspace Connection Speed Recommendations).  Additionally, for each examination (max 1 per user), Comparitech will donate one cent to charity.

Pros:

• Each test ran donates money to clemency
• Simple mode to chop-chop view download, upload, and ping metrics
• Provides an unbiased look at your bandwidth available
• No download required

Cons:

• Designed for quick tests, doesn't not have in depth monitoring features

4. Iperf

Iperf is a free, open up-source tool used for taking active measurements of throughput on a network. It is officially supported on CentOS, FreeBSD, and macOS. Co-ordinate to its Github page, a number of other *nothing based operating systems have been reported successfully using Iperf, and I was able to get information technology running on Linux Mint 17.ane without issue. Iperf tin can measure TCP (Transmission Control Protocol, UDP (User Datagram Protocol), and SCTP (Stream Command Transmission Protocol) throughput.

Iperf uses a client/server configuration, meaning the software needs to be installed on both endpoints for you to mensurate throughput. You lot can download and install Iperf here (Note: I was able to utilise apt-get install iperf on Mint 17.1).

In the example below, I ran Iperf in server mode past executing the command iperf –s, then continued to the server to measure TCP throughput by executing the control iperf –c x.0.2.fifteen (10.0.2.15 was the IP address of the Iperf server).  For more than on Iperf, cheque out its Github folio.

Pros:

• Complimentary, open up source tool
• Cross-platform compatibility gives it extended usability on MacOS and FreeBSD
• Very lightweight, tin can run efficiently on resources express machines

Cons:

• Must be installed on both the endpoint and the monitoring machine
• Designed for technical users, not equally user friendly equally nigh tools

5. NetCPS

NetCPS is a Windows Command Line utility that besides follows the client/server image for measuring throughput. Information technology has been effectually for a long time, but tin can nonetheless be useful on many modern Windows operating systems (it worked well on Windows x for me).

NetCPS is freeware, with the one exception that it is NOT permitted for governmental or military machine use. You lot can download, learn more about, and view the source code of NetCPS here.

In the instance below, I used NetCPS to measure throughput on a local PC's loopback address. Showtime, from the directory where the NetCPS.exe file was loaded, I executed the control NetCPS.exe –s to identify NetCPS in server mode, then in a separate cmd.exe Window I executed the command NetCPS.exe 127.0.0.1 to test the loopback IP address.

Pros:

• Uses very little system resources during monitoring
• Can run on legacy Windows operating systems as well as modern versions
• A adept barebones option of both short and long term tests

Cons:

• Not the most user friendly tool for non-technical users
• Uses CLI only, not graphical representation of bandwidth usage
• Lack enterprise functionality such as reporting or alerts

six. Netperf

NetPerf is a CLI tool used on *nix operating systems (it also compiles on Windows) similar to Iperf that was originally adult by Hewlett Packard. While it'south non technically open source, information technology is free to use and a fairly pop tool for measuring throughput and benchmarking network speeds.

For more information on Netperf, cheque out the manual and the Netperf Github.

Like NetCPS and Iperf, Netperf uses a client/server model. You can start the server using the command netserver –p <port_number> and then connect from a client using the command netperf –H <server_IP_address_or_FQDN> -p <port_number> . In the example below, we started the server on port 15222 from a host with IP address 10.0.2.fifteen.

Pros:

• Built for Linux operating systems, just can compile in Windows every bit well
• Complete gratis to utilize

Cons:

• Not the most user friendly tool for not-technical users
• Uses CLI only, non graphical representation of bandwidth usage
• Requires ii installs, uses the customer/server model requiring extra work

Let us know your feedback!

That was our crash course on throughput and list of throughput measurement tools. Did we get out annihilation out? Do y'all have any questions well-nigh the tools we mentioned hither? Allow us know in the annotate section below.

Source: https://www.comparitech.com/net-admin/network-throughput-best-monitors/

Posted by: ingramwittleasto.blogspot.com

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