[lug] Measuring Dialup Transfer Rates?

[Tkil]

>>>>> "David" == David Morris <lists at morris-clan.net> writes:

David> Anyone know of a way to measure the transfer rate for a dialup
David> connection to the internet (or ideally any generic network
David> interface?).

there are some tools to do precisely this (i think that "netperf" is
one of them, although it is a bit out of date).  the easiest way is to
use FTP; just grab something large (figure about 30 seconds worth of
transfer on the interface speed), make sure it's in memory (so that
you don't lose rates due to interrupts and whatnot).  use binary mode
(to avoid overhead of ascii/line-end conversions, although dialup
vs. today's CPUs should make that mostly moot).

try to find a place that is "near" the other end of your connection,
preferably on your ISP's LAN.  this probably matters less for a dialup
connection; on a higher-speed connection, however, congestion on the
internet itself is often the limiting factor, not the local
connection.

for testing faster interfaces, use a product that is competent; i
wouldn't trust the MS FTP server/client to be as efficient as the
linux one, so i'd use linux<->linux or bsd to test anything at or
above 10 Mb/s.

t.