Testing a gigabit internet link

[fogus]

Hello, all.

I'm looking for a way to test a gigabit net link. I have a fiber line from Cogent with "1000Mbps unmetered" but I need to verify that I'm actually getting that bandwidth. I'm having a hard time finding a host that will actually let me pull/push a solid gbit. I have a lot of IPs, so I was thinking of splitting the traffic around and measuring it at the gateway perhaps.

I did manage to squeeze 520Mbps from a speedtest.net relay via a CLI tool. Split three ways, the same relay gave me 660Mbps. Hard to know where the bottleneck is though.

Any other ideas?

Thanks, guys!

[b-man1]

speedtest.net had google fiber locations you could select, if those are still available to try. google fiber also has its own speed test site, but it seems to be down right now (or not available to non-google fiber subscribers?).

the last thing to keep in mind is you won't get too much higher than that 660 unless you have a multi-Gb adapter in your system. the fastest i've ever had internally on the LAN over Gb was about 800Mbps, as the tcp overhead kills the rest.

one last option (if this would even work) would be to set up your own speed test between external IPs. you would need to dedicated lines for that though and i don't think sharing would work (or at least the routing would be messed up). you can download the speedtest.net code and host it yourself.

.02

[Pugsley]

Not as scientific, but just find a popular torrent with lots of seeds and see how fast you can get it to go.

[FlyingPenguin]

I think your best bet is finding a company with an FTP server with a fat pipe. I've also noticed that STEAM has amazing bandwidth. When I download games it saturates my downstream pipe, and it tells you the bandwidth speed.