[netperf-talk] Re: netperf outputs

[Rick Jones]

yyang at commscope.com wrote:
> 
> Rick,
> Is there a way to display the netperf throughput number dynamically and 
> graphically?
> 
> Normally if I enter " netperf -H remote_host -l 60 ", the test runs for 
> 60 sec and display a throughput number. Is there a way to display the 
> throughput number dynamically and graphically during this test duration?

One can enable "demo mode" and get interim results displayed during the 
test.  However, netperf2 does not have any sort of GUI.

Netperf tries to make the interim results appear on a regular basis, but 
if the throughput varies considreably during the run that may not 
happen.  That stems from netperf using the quantity of work performed to 
trigger the output rather than a length of time - using time would have 
required netperf make lots of gettimeofday() calls, or rely on signals, 
neither of which were particularly palatable to me.

raj at tardy:~/netperf2_work$ ./configure --enable-demo

raj at tardy:~/netperf2_work$ make clean
raj at tardy:~/netperf2_work$ make

Then you get the -D global option:

raj at tardy:~/netperf2_work$ netperf -h

...

     -D [secs,units] * Display interim results at least every secs
                       seconds using units as the initial guess for units
                       per second

...

* For these options taking two parms, specifying one value with no comma
will only set the first parms and will leave the second at the default
value. To set the second value it must be preceded with a comma or be a
comma-separated pair. This is to retain previous netperf behaviour.

And then an example, using a loopback test:

raj at tardy:~/netperf2_work$ src/netperf -D 0.5 -l 5
TCP STREAM TEST from 0.0.0.0 (0.0.0.0) port 0 AF_INET to 
localhost.localdomain (127.0.0.1) port 0 AF_INET : demo
Interim result: 4517.16 10^6bits/s over 0.50 seconds
Interim result: 4490.77 10^6bits/s over 0.50 seconds
Interim result: 4525.86 10^6bits/s over 0.50 seconds
Interim result: 4495.29 10^6bits/s over 0.50 seconds
Interim result: 4525.07 10^6bits/s over 0.50 seconds
Interim result: 4495.65 10^6bits/s over 0.50 seconds
Interim result: 4514.48 10^6bits/s over 0.50 seconds
Interim result: 4478.57 10^6bits/s over 0.50 seconds
Interim result: 4485.78 10^6bits/s over 0.50 seconds
Recv   Send    Send
Socket Socket  Message  Elapsed
Size   Size    Size     Time     Throughput
bytes  bytes   bytes    secs.    10^6bits/sec

  87380  16384  16384    5.00     4500.89

The example above shows you can use fractional seconds :)

happy benchmarking,

rick jones

At some point netperf4 will have similar functionality.  Even further 
into the future it may have a GUI.  It all depends on how many cycles I 
have, and how many others can contribute :)