Local network bandwidth test app?

D

dandirk

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jun 5, 2004
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Ok I have replaced the storage space of my network from a workgroup with shared drives on multiple workstations to a central domain server/file server with a IDE RAID 5 array.

I have been noticing quite a slow down in my large file transfer/save times over the network.

I wanted to test my RAID array then test my network bandwidth can compare notes to determine if the speed drop is due to the RAID (parity calcs) or the network.

What would be a fairly easy local bandwidth testing app? I would assume a client/server model would be what I am looking for. I would like something a little more precise than a GB file and a stop watch...


Thanks much - Dan

Nforce1 + AMD 1800
LSI Megaraid i4 w/ 4 maxtor 250gb 7200rpm drives.
 
fusionrs - AnalogX seemed to do the bare minimum that I needed, but it was enough..

Chaotic Master - I will check it out...

I find it odd that there isn't a program out there in some sort of client/server config that would run a test and then give a final avg speed etc, etc..

In case anyone was wondering... the speed problem I was having seemed to be more application dependant that network or subsystem...

DVDShrink ripping a movie to RAID5 array was going at about 2 MB/s or ~15Mb/s
DVDShrink ripping a movie to a JBOD shared drive was better ~5MB/s or 45-50Mb/s
Moving the DVD dir to the JBOD drive was fastest at ~70Mb/s

I cannot remember if I tested the straight copy to RAID array... I think I did, I remember thinking that DVDShrink just seemed to have the issue... will check again when I get home.
 
it sounds like this is a disk-bound performance problem. if it's a linux machine, try bonnie++ or if it's windows you're on your own. I suggest that perhaps dvdshrink isn't the best indicator of performance. If you don't want to download anything onto the server, try something like "time dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/big.file bs=4k count=256k" to make a gigabyte. find out what your block size is (for the fs, not the raid) and change bs= to that and adjust count= to make 1024. then divide 1024 by seconds to get speed. on my local array, I get about 50-55 MB/s with raid0. raid5 would be less. is this raid card a _real_ raid card, or does cpu usage shoot thru the ceiling when you use it? use 'top' in one session, and try copying a big file.

If it's NT, move it to linux. It's not that hard. Look at redhat's offerings if you're a linux n00b. otherwise go to gentoo or slackware. Good luck.
 
it sounds like this is a disk-bound performance problem. if it's a linux machine, try bonnie++ or if it's windows you're on your own. I suggest that perhaps dvdshrink isn't the best indicator of performance. If you don't want to download anything onto the server, try something like "time dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/big.file bs=4k count=256k" to make a gigabyte. find out what your block size is (for the fs, not the raid) and change bs= to that and adjust count= to make 1024. then divide 1024 by seconds to get speed. on my local array, I get about 50-55 MB/s with raid0. raid5 would be less. is this raid card a _real_ raid card, or does cpu usage shoot thru the ceiling when you use it? use 'top' in one session, and try copying a big file.

If it's NT, move it to linux. It's not that hard. Look at redhat's offerings if you're a linux n00b. otherwise go to gentoo or slackware. Good luck.
 
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