bwping and
bwping6 are tools to measure bandwidth and response
times between two hosts using Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) echo
request/echo reply mechanism.
bwping deals with IPv4 networks, while
bwping6 - with IPv6 networks.
bwping [
-u bufsize ] [
-r reporting_period ]
[
-T tos ] [
-B bind_addr ]
-b kbps
-s pktsize -v volume target
bwping6 [
-u bufsize ] [
-r reporting_period
] [
-T tclass ] [
-B bind_addr ]
-b
kbps -s pktsize -v volume target
- -u bufsize
- Sets the send/receive buffer size in bytes. Default value will be
automatically calculated based on transfer speed, packet size and host
timer accuracy.
- -r reporting_period
- Sets the interval time in seconds between periodic bandwidth, RTT, and
loss reports. If zero, there will be no periodic reports (default).
- -T tos (bwping only)
- Sets the TOS value of outgoing ip packets. Default value is zero.
- -T tclass (bwping6 only)
- Sets the IPv6 Traffic Class value of outgoing ip packets. Default value is
zero.
- -B bind_addr
- Sets the source address of outgoing ip packets. By default the address of
the outgoing interface will be used.
- -b kbps
- Sets the transfer speed in kilobits per second.
- -s pktsize
- Sets the packet size in bytes.
- -v volume
- Sets the volume to transfer in bytes.
Oleg Derevenetz <oleg.derevenetz@gmail.com>
None known.
This utility uses raw sockets to deal with ICMP messages, so root privileges are
required to run it.
Although
bwping and
bwping6 does not require any special software
on the remote host (only the ability to respond on ICMP echo request
messages), there are some special requirements to network infrastructure,
local and remote host performance:
1. There should be no ICMP echo request/reply filtering on the network. This
includes QoS mechanisms (which often affects ICMP) at any point in the testing
path;
2. Local host should have enough CPU resources to send ICMP echo request
messages with given rate, and remote host should quickly respond on these
messages and should have no ICMP bandwidth limiting turned on.
If some of these requirements are not satisfied, then measurement results will
be inadequate or fail completely. In general, for testing bandwidth where QoS
is implemented, always test with traffic that matches the QoS class to be
tested.
netstat(1), ping(8)