NAME

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.

SYNOPSIS

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

OPTIONS

-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.

AUTHORS

Oleg Derevenetz <oleg.derevenetz@gmail.com>

BUGS

None known.

RESTRICTIONS

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.

SEE ALSO

netstat(1), ping(8)