Network: Monitor Outgoing Bandwidth Latency / Jitter

I've servers in two different data centers and connected via leased lines. How do I find out bandwidth latency and jitter between two servers using MS-Windows server, UNIX or Linux operating systems? How do I verify that my leased line based internet connection is stable between two data centers?

You need to use iperf which is a measurement tool for TCP/UDP bandwidth performance. iperf has a client and server functionality, and can measure the throughput between the two ends or servers, either unidirectonally or bi-directionally. It is open source software and runs on various platforms including Linux, Unix and Windows.

• See our quick tutorial - Measure network performance: Find bandwidth, jitter and datagram loss with iperf utility

SmokePing To Find Network Latency

SmokePing is free and open source software which keeps track of your network latency:

• Best of breed latency visualisation.
• Interactive graph explorer.
• Wide range of latency measurment plugins.
• Master/Slave System for distributed measurement.
• Highly configurable alerting system.
• Live Latency Charts with the most 'interesting' graphs.

Fig.01: Smokeping in Action

=> Download SmokePing

Other Programs

1. ttcp is a utility program for measuring network throughput, popular on Unix and Windows systems.
2. bwping is a tool to measure bandwidth and response times between two hosts using Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) echo request/echo reply mechanism. It does not require any special software on the remote host. The only requirement is the ability to respond on ICMP echo request messages.
3. mtr - mtr combines the functionality of the traceroute and ping programs in a single network diagnostic tool. As mtr starts, it investigates the network connection between the host mtr runs on and HOSTNAME. By sending packets with purposely low TTLs. It continues to send packets with low TTL, noting the response time of the intervening routers. This allows mtr to print the response percentage and response times of the internet route to HOSTNAME. A sudden increase in packet loss or response time is often an indication of a bad (or simply overloaded) link.