TCP benchmarking

[Vernon Schryver]

I've encountered another "benchmark."

First try the 4.3BSD `ping -l9999999 target` and look at the packet rate.
There are commercially available UNIX workstations that will deliver the
vast majority of the zillion 98-byte ether packets separated by only 9.6
microseconds.  The point is I think there are several vendors'
workstatsions that can write at or close to ethernet media speed, <<from a
user process>>.

Second, modify the more recent 4.3BSD-tahoe or reno ping.c to flush the "."
and "\b" characters only occassionally or when things get slow, so that
`ping -f` does not spend most of its time fiddling with stdio.  Then make
`ping -f` compute a packet/sec rate to be displayed at the end.  This
produces nice numbers that seem to vary depending on the speed of the
machines on both ends.

Neither of these are very interesting benchmarks; they're just fun.  Ttcp
is better for TCP or UDP, and FTP for overall file system and network speed.


Vernon Schryver,  vjs at sgi.com