Document revision 1.4 (06-Aug-2003)
This document applies to MikroTik RouterOS v2.7
The Bandwidth Tester can be used to monitor the throughput only to a remote MikroTik router (either wired or wireless) and thereby help to discover network ‘bottlenecks’.
Software Package Installation and Upgrading
The TCP test uses the standard TCP protocol with acknowledgments and follows the TCP algorithm on how many packets to send according to latency, dropped packets, and other features in the TCP algorithm. Please review the TCP protocol for details on its internal speed settings and how to analyze its behavior. Statistics for throughput are calculated using the entire size of the TCP packet. As acknowledgments are an internal working of TCP, their size and usage of the link are not included in the throughput statistics. Therefore this statistic is not as reliable as the UDP statistic when estimating throughput.
The UDP tester sends 110% or more packets than currently reported as received on the other side of the link. To see the maximum throughput of a link, the packet size should be set for the maximum MTU allowed by the links – usually this is 1500 bytes. There is no acknowledgment required by UDP; this implementation means that the closest approximation of the throughput can be seen.
!Caution! Bandwidth Test uses all available bandwidth (by default) and may impact network usability.
Bandwidth Test uses much resources. If you want to test real throughput of a router, you should run bandwidth test through it not from or to it. To do this you need at least 3 routers connected in chain: the Bandwidth Server, the given router and the Bandwidth Client:
Submenu level : /tool
[admin@MikroTik] tool bandwidth-server> print enabled: no authenticate: yes allocate-udp-ports-from: 2000 max-sessions: 10 [admin@MikroTik] tool>
The list of current connections can be get in session submenu:
[admin@MikroTik] tool> bandwidth-server session print # FROM PROTOCOL DIRECTION USER 0 10.0.0.168 udp send [admin@MikroTik] tool>
To enable bandwidth-test server without client authentication:
[admin@MikroTik] tool bandwidth-server> set enabled=yes authenticate=no [admin@MikroTik] tool bandwidth-server> print enabled: yes authenticate: no allocate-udp-ports-from: 2000 max-sessions: 10 [admin@MikroTik] tool>
Command name : /tool bandwidth-test
address (IP address) - IP address of destination host
assume-lost-time (time; default: 0s) - assume that connection is lost if Bandwidth Server
is not responding for that time
direction (receive/transmit/both; default: transmit) - the direction of the test
do (name | string; default: "") - script source
duration (time; default: 0s) - duration of the test
To run 15-second long bandwidth-test to the 10.0.0.211 host sending and receiving 1000-byte UDP packets and using username admin to connect
[admin@MikroTik] tool> bandwidth-test 10.0.0.211 duration=15s direction=both \ \... size=1000 protocol=udp user=admin status: done testing duration: 15s tx-current: 3.62Mbps tx-10-second-average: 3.87Mbps tx-total-average: 3.53Mbps rx-current: 3.33Mbps rx-10-second-average: 3.68Mbps rx-total-average: 3.49Mbps [admin@MikroTik] tool>