Tool to test LAN/WAN Bandwidth, latency and speed test?

[Hokie97VT]

I am looking for a tool to test my network "speed". We are a distributed company with 5 diferent offices connected via Verizon MPLS network for WAN. My users are complaing that things are very slow. Our vendor says that nothing will work unless we spend the dollars to get 100 Mbps at all sites, we currently have 6 Mbps.

I believe that my Latency on the Verizon MPLS WAN is the issue, it is 25 ms for 32 bytes with a simple ping test, where my LAN is 0ms for the ping test. I know the VERIZON has a TLS/ELAN/Metro Ethernet product and am thinking we may have to move to that.

I need a tool to get some base line info.
Please let me know any suggestions.

 

[lerdalt]

Try using some extended pings. I always use more than just the 32byte packet to get a better result. Also, there is a tool out there called ipperf. Only used it for testing a couple of times, but it does give a good result of some network speeds.

 

[North323]

how are these offices connected? routers? asa? vpn tunnels? are you having dropped packets? are you rate limiting? traffic shaping?

 

[Hokie97VT]

Routers at each site. No VPN tunnels. No rate limiting as I know of or traffic shaping.

 

[North323]

what kind of routers? are there a lot of access lists? are you routing with BGP? are the interfaces highly utilized? high cpu on the router? can you get a report from verizon to find out if they are rate limiting? if you pay for 6mb the will have a 'police' policy and if you are trying to exceed this, the packets are dropped.

 

[Hokie97VT]

We have Cisco Routers that we manage, or my consultant does. I am pretty sure they are 2800 series Routers at most of my sites.

 

[STARxFLYER]

There really isn't much you can do abuot latency, and YES latency will drastically effect your performance (especially for fat client software like SQL). A larger pipe (100MBs) will help your situation some, beause the system can shove more data thru per send, but it may not make it perfect, becuase your will probably have the same latecy with the 100MB line as your do with your existing 6MB line. If you were transfering LARGE streams of data (like transfering a 200MB file) you could mess around with TCP Window and buffer settings, but that takes time to ramp up TCP to an optimun throughput that small request will never achive. There are hardware solutions and packet shapers that can assist, but they are expensive. Outlook has Cached mode settings that can help email performance, but that is just one fix.

 

[STARxFLYER]

iperf is a free utility that might help you test you line. It allows you to dynamicaly change Windows/Buffer sizes and shuchm but it will just show you that yes you can infact get 6MB out of the line and help your applications perform better over the WAN.

 

[STARxFLYER]

sorry .. iperf will NOT help you applications perform better over the WAN ... it will just help you verify your WAN is what you ordered