Netperf

Netperf is a benchmarking utility designed to measure networking performance between two hosts. It provides a portable, configurable framework for assessing throughput, latency, and related characteristics across a range of transport protocols and test patterns. Netperf operates on a client–server model: a small daemon called netserver runs on the target host, and a netperf client is used from another host to run tests against it. The tests cover common network protocols, notably TCP and UDP, and a variety of interaction patterns such as stream throughput (TCP_STREAM) and request/response latency (TCP_RR). UDP tests are also available, including UDP_STREAM and UDP_RR.

Netperf can exercise both IPv4 and IPv6 connections and supports various socket options, buffer sizes, and message sizes to explore performance under different configurations. It is designed to be lightweight, scriptable, and portable across Unix-like systems and Windows ports.

History and status: Netperf was developed by Hewlett-Packard as part of its network performance measurement tools and has since evolved as an open-source project. It is widely used in labs, data centers, and research settings to quantify link capacity, compare hardware and software configurations, and support performance tuning and capacity planning.

Usage notes: Install netperf on the client and run netserver on the server. From the client, select a test (for example TCP_STREAM or TCP_RR), set a duration, and, if needed, adjust test parameters with the appropriate flags. Output typically reports throughput in bits per second or packets per second and latency in microseconds for RR tests, along with other statistics.