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You can check the maximum packet size on network using ping

To clear some statistics for the adapters

netstat -Zv 

Or

entstat -r entX

Iperf is a free tool available on linux, and AIX (perzl.org), also available for Windows You must first start the iperf server (-s) to listen for communication, and the start a client (-c) which generates traffic.

In my case nimbcp is the server, and nimprod the client.

You can test for example latency (Jitter) on network using UDP (-u) protocol:

root@nimbcp - /root >  iperf -s  -P 5 -i 1 -u
------------------------------------------------------------
Server listening on UDP port 5001
Receiving 1470 byte datagrams
UDP buffer size:  640 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
.....
[ ID] Interval       Transfer     Bandwidth        Jitter   Lost/Total Datagrams
[  3]  0.0- 1.0 sec   129 KBytes  1.06 Mbits/sec   0.116 ms    0/   89 (0%)
[  4]  0.0- 1.0 sec   126 KBytes  1.03 Mbits/sec   0.128 ms    1/   89 (1.1%)
[  5]  0.0- 1.0 sec   128 KBytes  1.05 Mbits/sec   0.113 ms    1/   89 (1.1%)


root@nimprod - /root > iperf -r -c nimbcp  -P 5 -i 1 -u
WARNING: option -r is not valid for server mode
------------------------------------------------------------
Client connecting to nimbcp, UDP port 5001
Sending 1470 byte datagrams
UDP buffer size: 64.0 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
...
[ ID] Interval       Transfer     Bandwidth
[  7]  0.0- 1.0 sec   129 KBytes  1.06 Mbits/sec
[  3]  0.0- 1.0 sec   129 KBytes  1.06 Mbits/sec
[  4]  0.0- 1.0 sec   129 KBytes  1.06 Mbits/sec
[  5]  0.0- 1.0 sec   129 KBytes  1.06 Mbits/sec
[  6]  0.0- 1.0 sec   129 KBytes  1.06 Mbits/sec
[SUM]  0.0- 1.0 sec   646 KBytes  5.29 Mbits/sec

You can test for example TCP throughput on network on 5 parallel connections:

root@nimbcp - /root >  iperf -s  -P 5 -i 1
------------------------------------------------------------
Server listening on TCP port 5001
TCP window size:  256 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
....
[ ID] Interval       Transfer     Bandwidth
[  4]  0.0- 1.0 sec  33.9 MBytes   284 Mbits/sec
[  5]  0.0- 1.0 sec  27.7 MBytes   232 Mbits/sec
[  6]  0.0- 1.0 sec  14.2 MBytes   119 Mbits/sec
[  7]  0.0- 1.0 sec  22.3 MBytes   187 Mbits/sec
[  8]  0.0- 1.0 sec  7.43 MBytes  62.3 Mbits/sec
[SUM]  0.0- 1.0 sec   105 MBytes   885 Mbits/sec

root@nimprod - /root > iperf -r -c nimbcp  -P 5 -i 1
WARNING: option -r is not valid for server mode
------------------------------------------------------------
Client connecting to nimbcp, TCP port 5001
TCP window size:  256 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
....
[ ID] Interval       Transfer     Bandwidth
[  3]  0.0- 1.0 sec  34.2 MBytes   287 Mbits/sec
[  4]  0.0- 1.0 sec  28.0 MBytes   235 Mbits/sec
[  6]  0.0- 1.0 sec  22.8 MBytes   191 Mbits/sec
[  5]  0.0- 1.0 sec  14.4 MBytes   121 Mbits/sec
[  7]  0.0- 1.0 sec  7.62 MBytes  64.0 Mbits/sec
[SUM]  0.0- 1.0 sec   107 MBytes   898 Mbits/sec

Network theoretical throughput:

manu@mypc:/tmp> ftp 10.0.10.21
Connected to 10.0.10.21.
220 aix01 FTP server (Version 4.2 Tue Feb 19 19:37:47 CST 2013) ready.
Name (10.0.102.21:manu): root
331 Password required for root.
Password: 
230-Last login: Tue Sep 15 16:09:42 CDT 2015 on /dev/pts/0 from 10.0.11.37
230 User root logged in.
Remote system type is UNIX.
Using binary mode to transfer files.
ftp> cd /tmp
250 CWD command successful.
ftp> bin
200 Type set to I.

ftp> put "| dd if=/dev/zero bs=32k count=10000" /dev/null
local: | dd if=/dev/zero bs=32k count=10000 remote: /dev/null
229 Entering Extended Passive Mode (|||32789|)
150 Opening data connection for /dev/null.
10000+0 records in
10000+0 records out
327680000 bytes (328 MB) copied, 27,8874 s, 11,8 MB/s
226 Transfer complete.
327680000 bytes sent in 00:27 (11.20 MiB/s)
ftp> 

Remark As ftp is a single threat process, you have to run multiples sessions in parallel.

create a file .netrc

machine testftp login root password root
macdef init
put "|dd if=/dev/zero bs=1M count=1000" /dev/null
bye
<leave blank line>

# chmod 400 .netrc
# for i in 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
do
ftp testftp | grep seconds &
done