Testing with iPerf – Command Line

Last updated on December 7th, 2022 at 08:24 am

Here are my notes for using iPerf at the command line. When iPerf 3 was released, I used it extensively due to newer or improved features. As of the time of this post, version 2 is recently updated and at version 2.1.

I highly recommend using a test file for testing speeds, as noted in the text file commands. I’ve used the Mynikko Dummy File Creator in the link below.

Client-Side:

Basic default test:

iperf3 -c 10.18.2.6

Run a 30-second test, giving results every 1 second:

iperf3 -c 10.18.2.6 -i 1 -t 30

Run the test for 2 seconds before collecting results to allow TCP slow start to finish. The -O flag sets the Omit mode to a 2-second delay, and the -i flag sets a ½ second report interval.

iperf3 -c 10.18.2.6 -O 2 -i 0.5

Transmit specified file:

iperf3 -c 10.18.2.6 -F 10MB.txt

Send output to a file:

iperf3 -c 10.18.2.6 –logfile testlog.txt

Send specified file in 2 Parallel streams (-P):

iperf3 -c 10.18.2.6 -F 10MB.txt -P 2

Run a 30Mbps (-b) test:

iperf3 -c 10.18.2.6 -i 1 -b 30M

For packet loss and jitter:

iperf3 -c 10.18.2.6 -u

Interval of 1 second (-i) for 30 seconds (-t)

iperf3 -c 10.18.2.6 -u -i 1 -t 30

100 Mb UDP Test:

iperf3 -c 10.18.2.6 -u -i 1 -b 100M

iperf3 -c 10.18.2.6 -u -i 1 -t 30 -b 100M

Bidirectional tests:

iperf3 -c 10.18.2.6 -d

Server-side (in this example: 10.18.2.6):

iperf3 -s

Version 2.1 Download

https://sourceforge.net/projects/iperf2/files/

Version 3 Download

https://software.es.net/iperf/

https://iperf.fr/iperf-download.php

Mynikko dummy file creator

http://www.mynikko.com/dummy/

Documentation & Blogs

https://iperf.fr/iperf-doc.php

https://support.cumulusnetworks.com/hc/en-us/articles/216509388-Throughput-Testing-and-Troubleshooting

http://software.es.net/iperf/invoking.html

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