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Is there a way to benchmark how fast my router is connected to my PC, independent of the internet?

I've had slower-than-usual internet-based benchmarks, and I'm having a hard time figuring out if it's because of a bad router-to-PC connection (interference, bad signal, etc.) or if it's indeed because my internet is actually slower.

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Is the connection wired or wireless from the PC to the router? –  Paul Dec 23 '11 at 8:18
@Paul: Wireless. –  Mehrdad Dec 23 '11 at 8:25
sourceforge.net/projects/iperf Cross-platform tool with great functionality. –  user203508 Mar 1 '13 at 23:02

4 Answers 4

In UNIX, you can use a utility called pv (pipe viewer) to measure data through a pipeline. You can hack this to test throughput to another host. Assuming you have ssh access to your router:

yes | pv | ssh router.foo.com "cat > /dev/null"

You're basically piping arbitrary data from the yes command to /dev/null on your router and measuring the throughput with pv.

There are a number of other ways to accomplish this, with a variety of tools. If you're on a Windows box, you can try hacking similar operations with Cygwin, but I'm sure others on this forum can provide solid suggestions on other applications.

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SSH usually uses compression, so this is not the best way to measure it. –  Ernestas Dec 29 '12 at 9:10

If you have another PC in the same network, you can have a file transfer between those 2 PC's and see the network bandwidth usage via standard methods available.

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The trouble is that PC-to-PC transfer is ridiculously slower than internet download anyway (no idea why), so this doesn't work. –  Mehrdad Dec 23 '11 at 9:37
@Mehrdad: are you serious?? How can that be??? You should edit the question with your wireless modem, and what all config options have you seected.. –  Vineet Menon Dec 24 '11 at 14:45
See here. –  Mehrdad Dec 24 '11 at 18:20

The Echo protocol and the spray programs were designed for this purpose.

But probably your router doesn't support this.

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I think your looking for a LAN Speed Test. Here is a piece of free software that should do what you are after: Link. I found this with a Google search for LAN speed test. If it not what you need there are other options.

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