LiquidFiles Documentation
LiquidFiles Documentation

Testing Network Performance

Sometimes it's necessary to test networking performance to understand if the download or upload speed doesn't match expectations. The easiest is to use the network testing tool iperf. You can install iperf by running the following command:

apt install iperf3

To run the server, please disable the builtin firewall, and start the server

systemctl stop firewalld
iperf3 -s

You can enable the firewall with systemctl start firewalld when you're done.

On the client, you can install iperf and run:

iperf -c server_hostname_or_ip -i 5 -t 30

You will see output similar to:

Connecting to host liquidfiles.example.com, port 5201
[  4] local 172.16.5.1 port 65114 connected to liquidfiles.example.com port 5201
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bandwidth
[  4]   0.00-5.00   sec  35.6 MBytes  59.7 Mbits/sec
[  4]   5.00-10.00  sec  33.7 MBytes  56.6 Mbits/sec
[  4]  10.00-15.00  sec  34.1 MBytes  57.2 Mbits/sec
[  4]  15.00-20.00  sec  31.8 MBytes  53.3 Mbits/sec
[  4]  20.00-25.01  sec  34.3 MBytes  57.6 Mbits/sec
[  4]  25.01-30.00  sec  35.1 MBytes  58.8 Mbits/sec
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bandwidth
[  4]   0.00-30.00  sec   205 MBytes  57.2 Mbits/sec                  sender
[  4]   0.00-30.00  sec   204 MBytes  57.2 Mbits/sec                  receiver

iperf Done.

The actual result will change dramatically based on network speed and latency. You can also run a UDP test by adding -u to the client. The UDP option will also report jitter and packet loss.

Connecting to host liquidfiles.example.com, port 5201
[  4] local liquidfiles.example.com port 52279 connected to liquidfiles.example.com port 5201
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bandwidth       Total Datagrams
[  4]   0.00-5.00   sec   632 KBytes  1.03 Mbits/sec  79
[  4]   5.00-10.00  sec   640 KBytes  1.05 Mbits/sec  80
[  4]  10.00-15.00  sec   640 KBytes  1.05 Mbits/sec  80
[  4]  15.00-20.00  sec   640 KBytes  1.05 Mbits/sec  80
[  4]  20.00-25.00  sec   640 KBytes  1.05 Mbits/sec  80
[  4]  25.00-30.00  sec   640 KBytes  1.05 Mbits/sec  80
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bandwidth       Jitter    Lost/Total Datagrams
[  4]   0.00-30.00  sec  3.74 MBytes  1.05 Mbits/sec  0.149 ms  0/479 (0%)
[  4] Sent 479 datagrams

iperf Done.

For the client, iperf3 should be available for most systems if you do a web search for iperf3 client including finding windows clients.