INTRODUCTION
Network Performance Test Tools is a toolbox of network diagnostic and performance testing utilities. It includes tcpdump, iperf3 and netperf3. These are the same tools that power all our Network Speed Test products. These network performance test tools will help you diagnose high latency / packet loss and other network connection problems, or design, tune or test how your local network (LAN) and your internet uplink perform for best application performance.
Network Performance Test Tools is an online application developed by National Instruments to quickly and easily test your network performance. This tool allows you to see how your network stacks up in comparison to other users of the network, and help improve it. It provides you with a graphical representation of performance tests and data that can be used to troubleshoot problem areas on your network.
One of the most important aspects of IT operations in organizations is maintaining constant connectivity and productivity. IT teams have to ensure the proper distribution and management of network speed and the quality of service (QoS) between different applications and users. In this respect, network latency is an important metric.
There is a wide variety of latency testing tools available in the market. These tools can help you track and analyze a vast amount of network-specific information and metrics related to network performance. Some tools will simply help you measure latency, while others can give you a detailed analysis of bandwidth utilization.
In this article, we’ll list the top network latency testing tools and explore how they can help you monitor and optimize your network for reliable performance.
What Is Network Performance Test Tools
Network Performance Test Tools (NPTT) is a collection of programs that help assess the performance of a TCP/IP network. The main program in the suite, PingPlotter, allows the user to determine what portion of their network is causing problems based on ICMP and UDP pings, as well as other protocols. It also measures MTU and throughput and can stress test network links. The suite also includes tools such as PathGrapher which shows all paths between two points that an IP packet may take through an internetwork, Bandwidth Monitor which will monitor traffic loading on your network interfaces, NetFlow Analyzer which parses NetFlow data sent by routers and examines the results, Jitter Tester which sends packets to several ports simultaneously to measure jitter, and Multimeter which allows you to analyze statistics over time to see what changes occurred on your network and if they were caused by a hardware event.
Network Performance testing definition
What is network testing, really? Since I am not very good at explaining things, I went to the Wikipedia article on software testing and found this:
“Software testing is an investigation conducted to provide stakeholders with information about the quality of the product or service under test. Software testing can also provide an objective, independent view of the software to allow the business to appreciate and understand the risks of software implementation.” – Wikipedia – Software Testing
That sounds pretty good to me. But if we take that passage and replace “software” with “network”, we get:
“Network testing is an investigation conducted to provide stakeholders with information about the quality of the product or service under test. Network testing can also provide an objective, independent view of the network to allow the business to appreciate and understand the risks of network implementation.”
Couldn’t be further from the truth. Network testing is, in the end, making sure that your network configuration works as designed. Network testing is very similar to software testing, with one exception: in contrast to software testing, network testing often has to happen in a production environment, after the configuration change was made. In fact, it is sometimes very difficult, or almost impossible, to model a complex system like a large enterprise network, or the Internet itself, in a lab environment. Thus, network testing is a MUST-HAVE step in the network implementation process.
Network testing use cases
Network testing should be run ad-hoc after a configuration change to validate that everything went well, as well as permanently, via active network monitoring, to detect network problems as soon as they happen. In the first case, here are some situations in which you want to validate your design and implementation assumptions after a configuration change:
- Circuits or site turn-up: once a new remote site or WAN link is installed, you can verify with a tool like iPerf that you get the bandwidth requested of your carrier and with ping to confirm that the circuit has no packet loss; you can also use single-board computers with iperf installed; another important thing to test in a new site, is testing what’s the maximum MTU (Maximum Transmission Unit) allowed.
- Routing policy change: due to network complexity, the larger the network, the higher the risk that a routing policy change will have unexpected consequences on your routing table. By relying on distributed monitoring agents that run continuous ping and traceroute tests in a full-mesh fashion, you can validate in real-time that a routing policy change is modifying your routing table as expected.
- Firewall rules updates: it’s always good practice to verify that a new firewall ruleset is successfully implemented, whether it should be blocking, or allowing, certain traffic. To verify a successful update of a firewall, you can use a port scanner like nmap, or perform a TCP-based ping test from the unprotected to the protected network.
- Quality of Service (QoS): applying a QoS configuration to your network is not an easy task. There are so many dependencies and little things that could go wrong, so testing is extremely important to verify that, in the end, the network is classifying, marking, and queuing traffic as designed. If you want to learn more about this use case, you can read a blog post by Matt Smith about how to validate QoS.
- Network speed tests: measuring throughput, such as download and upload speed to the Internet, is very important when estimating the end-user experience; to measure network speed, there are open-source utilities available, such as iperf (mentioned above), as well as commercial ones; check out this article that lists different open-source and commercial solutions for speedtest.
Top 9 Network Performance Test Tools
- Network Performance Monitor
- Paessler Router Traffic Grapher (PRTG)
- NetScanTools
- NirSoft NetworkLatencyView Tool
- PingPlotter
- NetFlow Traffic Analyzer
- Network Bandwidth Analyzer Pack
- Engineer’s Toolset
- VoIP & Network Quality Manager
1. Network Performance Monitor
SolarWinds® Network Performance Monitor (NPM), the company’s flagship product, is an excellent tool to monitor and manage the entire network infrastructure, which covers all devices, applications, and users in a network. This tool offers visual NetFlow analysis and includes latency testing features. With this tool, you can check on all devices on the network, discover slow segments, and get recommendations to fix problems. With NPM, admins can spot congestion on ports and identify paths and servers with overloaded CPUs. They can also get alerts to resolve networking issues. Furthermore, it’s easy to get started with NPM, as SolarWinds offers a 30-day fully functional free trial for evaluation.
2. Paessler Router Traffic Grapher (PRTG)
Paessler Router Traffic Grapher (PRTG) is another comprehensive bandwidth monitoring tool that allows admins to view network patterns and consolidate alerts at a centralized location. The auto-discovery feature of this tool helps admins scan the entire network and discover new systems or changes to the network. It’s easy to view the performance of your network in real-time with color-coded maps and a robust dashboard system.
3. NetScanTools
NetScanTools is one of the most cost-effective and affordable sets of 50 network management tools and utilities available for Windows-based systems. Available in Pro, Basic, and LE packages, NetScanTools collects information automatically and presents it using automated reports for a detailed view.
4. NirSoft NetworkLatencyView Tool
The NetworkLatencyView tool from NirSoft works on any version of Windows and listens to the new TCP connections on your system. This tool calculates the latency for every new TCP connection and allows admins to export the latency information into text files as well as .csv, .html, and .xml files. The tool also offers geographical information for every destination IP address. You can get additional information about the destination IP address by integrating it with the IPNetInfo utility.
5. PingPlotter
Available in Free, Standard, and Professional editions, the PingPlotter tool can monitor and troubleshoot complex network infrastructures with its bundle of tools. Every version uses Ping and Traceroute, and they all present the results in a graphical format. The tool collects information about app servers, web domains, and test routes. It displays this information in easy-to-understand graphs and helps you take immediate action without much hassle.
6. NetFlow Traffic Analyzer
SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer (NTA) is another SolarWinds product more focused on monitoring network bandwidth and analyzing network traffic. It offers a web-based interface to monitor the flow of network traffic. NTA allows admins to discover traffic patterns and provides greater visibility into the abrupt traffic flow. This tool collects data and presents it in a visual form to examine high traffic volumes between network devices. You can learn more about NTA or get a free subscription for 30 days here.
7. Network Bandwidth Analyzer Pack
SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer Pack (BAP) is a comprehensive network bandwidth analysis and performance monitoring solution combining the capabilities of both SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor and SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer. The combined subscription of these tools helps you detect, diagnose, and resolve network issues by using a wide range of features, including packet sniffing, monitoring SNMP-enabled devices, and NetFlow analysis. With the help of BAP, admins can allocate bandwidth to applications according to their organizational needs and troubleshoot network issues leading to latency, jitters, CPU overloads, etc. You can try BAP for free here.
8. Engineer’s Toolset
SolarWinds Engineer’s Toolset™ (ETS) consists of more than 60 tools designed to help you monitor and analyze the overall health of the network and get real-time alerts about it. A range of network scanning tools allows you to diagnose network issues and take remedial actions. You can use the Response Time Monitor to track the availability of all the devices in your environment and obtain latency information in a tabulated form. The Memory Monitor helps you view the total memory available along with the memory utilization of network devices in real-time. You can also use the CPU Monitor to track the CPU load for multiple devices in a tabular form. The CPU monitor can also send timely alerts when a peak load level for a device is recorded.
With these tools, you can also perform auto-discovery to keep track of existing and newly added devices. You can also manage logs and configurations for different devices, including SNMP traps. Moreover, it’s easy to get started with SolarWinds ETS, as installation typically takes only a few minutes. You can get more information and start a free trial here.
9. VoIP & Network Quality Manager
SolarWinds VoIP & Network Quality Manager (VNQM) is designed to provide deep insight into the quality of service (QoS) metrics of Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) calls. This tool allows you to view the call path of VoIP calls from the initiation to the end of the call. It records metadata from VoIP calls, such as call origin and destination IPs, latency, packet loss, call termination cause, and more. These records can help troubleshoot VoIP call issues and spot areas leading to poor performance in your network. This tool can also automatically discover Cisco IP SLA-enabled network devices. Furthermore, it takes only a few clicks to deploy SolarWinds VoIP & Network Quality Manager. You can learn more about the tool’s features and capabilities or download a free trial here.
CONCLUSION
The free PingPlotter network diagnostic utility from SolarWinds is an advanced bandwidth monitoring tool that provides a real time display of network response times and detailed information about remote computers. It will run as a standalone application on your desktop, or can be deployed as a service that runs in the background within Windows without the need to install any software on remote machines.