Re: [Iperf-users] Testing network integrity

[Tim C. <Tim...@ji...>]

Hi,

You’d likely ideally want some kind of harness to run iperf, and perhaps other tools, over time and squirrel the results to a database with a useful viewer and alerting system.

What we use for this, in a very different scenario of measuring network characteristics between university networks, e.g., those participating in the CERN experiments, is perfSONAR. It’s an open source package that can measure throughput, loss, latency, and path over time, and has support to allow you to configure ‘meshes’ of tests between specific servers, controlled from a single central config file, with the mesh results viewable via Grafana (soon, in 5.1, we’re at 5.1 beta now).

It’s not clear though that you could install such a tool in your environment, or add small form factor servers to run it, or be able to run such servers even as containers. So this answer may be quite unhelpful, apologies if so.  It requires servers at each measurement point, rather than running tests over time from a single point.

The loss/latency tests use OWAMP, running fairly continuously.  You can also configure iperf2 or iperf3 tests to run periodically, by default every 6 hours for 30 seconds.

See https://www.perfsonar.net/ if interested, and there’s a very helpful user list at https://lists.internet2.edu/sympa/info/perfsonar-user.

Tim

On 5 Apr 2024, at 05:30, Grahvendy, Patrick (Cobar - AU) <Pat...@me...> wrote:

You don't often get email from pat...@me...<mailto:pat...@me...>. Learn why this is important<https://aka.ms/LearnAboutSenderIdentification>
Greetings Iperf folk

I’m responsible for a remote control system for heavy earth moving equipment in an underground mining environment. The system consists of:


  1.  Windows PC on the surface as the main control unit
  2.  4 remote control stations – 1 on the surface, 3 underground
  3.  Numerous access barrier boxes – controlling laser barrier safety systems
  4.  Numerous Wifi access points – to connect the loaders to the network
  5.  4 underground earth moving front end loaders – equipped with Wifi machine clients


Interconnections between all the fixed hardware consist of fibre optic lines to various network switches placed at different levels underground. From those network switches we use Cat6 ethernet cabling to the end devices.

1,2,3 and 5 above all contain a PLC unit which interfaces DC control signals to IP data. If connection is lost between any of these devices the system goes into an immediate fail safe and shuts the machine in operation down.

The issue I’m having is lost packet data intermittently causing this shutdown condition.

Running various continuous pings from the surface control PC to different IP address locations underground I can determine roughly where the unreliable connections are.

Can Iperf be configured to run continuously, say over several hours, and provide more specific feedback on where the system is losing integrity?

Any feedback or insight gratefully appreciated.


Regards,

Patrick Grahvendy
AutoMine Specialist


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