Quickly discovering the speed between two Linux servers can often be a chore of copying large files around.
There is a better way with iperf.
iperf can be used to quickly setup a server and client process on two Linux servers and report the max network throughput between them.
Server
Run the following command on the server machine:
iperf -s -i 10
-s- Create a server that will listen on TCP 5001.-i 10- Print a speed report every 10 seconds.
Client
On the client run the following command:
iperf -i 10 -c <SERVER>
-i- Print a speed report every 10 seconds.-c- The server’s IP or hostname.
Result
Every 10 seconds the measured network speed will be printed on the client and server. Here is the server’s output on my test machine:
# iperf -s -i 10
------------------------------------------------------------
Server listening on TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 128 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
[ 4] local 1.1.1.1 port 5001 connected with 2.2.2.2 port 36172
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[ 4] 0.0000-10.0000 sec 2.27 GBytes 1.95 Gbits/sec
[ 4] 0.0000-10.0163 sec 2.27 GBytes 1.84 Gbits/sec
[ 4] 0.0000-10.0163 sec 2.27 GBytes 1.95 Gbits/sec
I’m getting a speed of ~1.9Gbits/sec between these machines.