Hi there

We need to do throughput testing on some of our Gigabit Laser links for end customers. I think MT would be a lot cheaper than buying an Ethernet tester (Smartbits, sunrise etc) for basic "good/bad" indication.

Anyone got an idea of what traffic loading you can put on a Gigabit NIC using a high performance (3GHz) CPU and the inbuilt bandwidth tester in MT? Ideally we want to "fill up" the Gigabit link between 2 MT routers using the bandwidth test utility.
Also any recommended NICs (Intel I think is good - any particular model) ?

Using 1GHz CPUs we easily fill up a 100Mbps interface without 100% CPU usage, but Gigabit is 10x that ...

Regards

a good card is the 'intel pro 1000' (pci-x version). as i once wrote on the forum, we tested a couple of gigabits from one mikrotik to another with some xeon computers.

can you try to windows Btest program maybe? then you don't even need routers. make sure you don't run the bandwidth tester on the same computer that you are testing - the test eats up resources, so it will affect your test.

Thanks Normis,

We already use the Windows bandwidth tester as well, but it is less efficient than the RouterOS version (well no surprise - blame that on Windows!) so a normal 1GHz desktop PC with W2k seems to have problems "filling up" a 100Mbps pipe.

Well if you got a couple of Gigabits across between routers, I'm well impressed - will go and get the bits to make this work ...

Thanks again,

PS what is the difference (other than price) between "workstation" and "server" adaptors - does the latter work better under RouterOS?

Stephen

test was made as usual - 'over' the two routers.

(routeros btest) --> (router 1) ----> (router 2) ---> (routeros btest 2)

so between router 1 and router 2 we got 1.6Gbps+. afaik all 4 computers were xeons.

Hi Normis,

I think only a single CPU can be used with RouterOS, and most Xeon MBs seem to have sockets for 2 CPUs.
只是冲浪WWW我发现这单CPU:
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductI ... ctID=51447
Is that going to be suitable, or do you have other suggestions?

The only reason for doing this inhouse is super-fast LAN product testing, so we'd just put the MB in a normal PC case, no attempt to "productise" or make custom electronics as we of course do for shipping customer products

Regards

IMO you can use these dual-cpu boards with just one cpu installed

An affordable Xeon Dual motherboard I use alot is the Asus PC-DL, it goes for $196 out the door on the internet, supports dual hyperthreading 533mhz fsb Xeon processors, works great for servers or powerful workstations.
Intel 875P Chipset
Built in Serial ATA Raid
Built in Intel CSA based Gigabit LAN
Built in Firewire/USB 2.0

Thanks everyone that's really helpful -