NIC testing

[Taz]

I'm about to test a group of NIC's and just wanted to run it past you guys in case you have some better testing methods. I plan to do some timed file transfers from a Win2k server using both TCP/IP and another protocol probably NetBui as it's the easiest for most people to setup. Then run some FTP transfers from a local FTP server and maybe some sort of benchmarking apps like SiSoft Sandra or NetBench. The Client PC will be running Win2k Pro SP2 and the Server Win2k Server SP2 using MS's FTP server. Anyone see any problems with this or have some suggestions on better ways of testing them

[Marshmallowman]

multiple clients, gives you a better indication of server network performance.
Also check CPU usage as a major plus of a good card is its low cpu utilisation.
Multiple connections wthe several transfers running and perhaps a network browseing Script or something.

[dZeus]

Don't use NetBUI, it's outdated and not widely use at all... use TCP/IP for all the testing.

When you bench with the ftp client, make sure you transfer to a null device, and retransfer the same file a couple of times, so that it will be put in the file cache on the server. That way you will be sure that the transfer will not be limited to HDD read and write speeds.

check the amount of CPU time used to do such a transfer, and devide it tby the time it took to complete the transfer (most FTP servers give you a very accurate/detailed result), for the average amount of CPU time used to get the average speed to transfer the file.

[KeiFront]

If you want to test the raw speed of the NIC's you can better set up a ramdisk so you won't be limited by your HD. It's almost the same as the file cache that's dZeus is proposing.

[RichL]

When I test NICs I usually just plug them into a routing switch and hit them with couple of million 2k pings with low interpacket delay.
Of course not everyone has a Cisco6509 or 7204 to use

[Greebe]

I use a old freeware app called NetLab 1.4

From it you can control ping rate, delay time and packet size... works a peach

But it does a whole lot more like Finger, Whois, Time (with auto correction) Quote Ping, Trace route, DNS, port scanner and Info (what Winsock version and other tidbits).

This was written by Alexander Danileiko... sadly the only link to him that I to him now is http://www.taverna.ru/
email (unknown if it's still used)

adanil@prodigy.com

you can grab it here.

[Taz]

Thanks for the suggestions guys, I'll let you know how I get on