How to check the speed of network interface in HP-Unix server?

[GnanaShekar]

Hi,

How to check the speed of network interface in HP-Unix server?
For example, I would like to estimate the amount of time it would take for me to send and recieve a file through ftp / scp from an HP-Unix server.

Please suggest,
Thanks & Regards

[siva0123]

Hi Shekar ,

You can find the speed of the network interface in the lanadmin command.


Thanks,
siva

[Steven Schweda]

Knowing the speed of one interface along the
path provides an upper bound on the speed,
not necessarily a good estimate of the speed
of a file copy operation, as that speed
depends on all the hardware along the path,
as well as any software overhead.

If you really need to know how long it takes
to copy a file, then you should measure the
time needed to copy some files.

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalome,

Take not of what I posted to your Linux question on the same subject.

The data you get from lanadmin is more useful in determining if your interface and network hardware is proeprly configured than it is for estimating throughput.

The way to estimate througput is to push through some sample files of various sizes and take timing.

SEP

[Victor Fridyev]

In order to see speed of a network interface, run:
#> lanscan
You'll see something like that:
:/# lanscan
Hardware Station Crd Hdw Net-Interface NM MAC HP-DLPI DLPI
Path Address In# State NamePPA ID Type Support Mjr#
0/0/0/0 0x00306E272C9D 0 UP lan0 snap0 1 ETHER Yes 119
0/4/0/0/6/0 0x0010837B4B9E 1 UP lan1 snap1 2 ETHER Yes 119
0/4/0/0/7/0 0x0010837B4B9F 2 UP lan2 snap2 3 ETHER Yes 119

Now, in order to see speed of lan0, run
/# lanadmin -x 0
Current Speed = 100 Full-Duplex Auto-Negotiation-OFF

where 0 is NMID of the card

HTH

[Bill Hassell]

What you are asking is not the speed of the link but the performance -- very different metrics. Start with a directly connected link - no routers, WANs, etc, and a 100 Mbit link. Assuming two modern systems (HP-UX version 11.11 or later) with modern LAN cards (very low driver overhead), the actual data transmission is a series bytes with overhead elements that vary with the protocol. As a start divide the link speed by 10 for a rough byte rate (ie, 100Mbit = 10Mbyte). Then, transmission is not one direction, but a series of acks in response to each packet (typical copy methods). With an efficient protocol like ftp, this further reduces throughput to about 7-8Mbytes/sec. Simple file copy methods using pipes reduces throughput to as little 4-6 Mbytes/sec.

But when you send the file through a wide area network (where ping times are hundreds of ms) then throughput drops like a rock. You can try to estimate the time with an average ping response time, but WANs often have highly variable response times. So to predict the time needed, send a fixed length file, perhaps a 100 Mbyte file, several times, and record the variations in completion times. This pragmatic approach is much more accurate than math estimates.

[Yogeeraj_1]

Hi,

i had downloaded a script from this forum that helps me each time i have to query the same information.

hope this helps!

kind regards
yogeeraj

[Sunil Talreja]

Run the attach perl program on both machines to test the speed between the machines.

On one machine you will need to run the this program in server mode and on other machine you will have to run it in client mode. See e.g. below

To run as Server type
perl bandwidth.pl server machineName/ip 9999

To run as client type
perl bandwidth.pl adaptive machineName/ip 9999

Note - MachineName/ip is the name or the ip address of the machine on which you are running the bandwith.pl program. i.e. whatever is the ip of the box itself.

9999 - is the port number for communication.

[Raj D.]

Fist find out the lan speed using #lanadin -x PPA_no and then calculate as per the size of the file and network card speed at both end.
Remember 100Mbps lan card will transfer likely to be 100kB/s ,if it is directly connected , other wise it will share with the no of ports in the HUB side.

hth,
Raj.