What is Network speed?
Most of the Data Centres and Web Hosting companies advertise server network speeds of 1Gbps or 10 or 100Gbps. Before we go into how we can measure the speed, we need to understand the concept of the network speed.
You can take an analogy of highway. 10Gbps doesn't mean a faster highway, but primarily a wider highway. This means you have 10 times as many lanes as a 1Gbps highway. It definitely does not mean you can drive ten times faster because just like packets, it's really hard for a single car to drive 600mph but now you can drive ten cars each at 60mph without any one of them depending on the rest of the cars.
Also, maximum throughput speeds are usually theoretical and only exist under ideal conditions. So you may be able to burst past 1Gbps, but it'll be really hard to hit 10Gbps, even if the other end of the highway is on the same network.
Normally in a residential setup, if you have a 10Gbps network, it is still hard to max out that speed even with only a ‘feet' of cable, let alone hundreds of miles.
What do we recommend?
Our recommendation is to use IPERF to test server network speeds for TCP, UDP and SCTP. It allows active measurements of maximum achievable bandwidth on IP Networks. iperf is a cross-platform software and open source.
The quality of a link can be tested as follows:
– Latency (response time or RTT): can be measured with the Ping command.
– Jitter (latency variation): can be measured with an iperf UDP test.
– Datagram loss: can be measured with an iperf UDP test.
– The bandwidth is measured through TCP tests.
Here is the link to the iperf documentation
IPREF binaries are available for almost all of the platforms on ipref download page. These can be download to test the network speed.
How do I test?
To test the speed, follow the following steps.
Step 1. Download the iperf utility. You can download the binaries as per your platform.
Step 2. On the server that will be receiving data, open an elevated command window and run the following command: “iperf.exe –s –w 2m”.
Step 3. On the server that will be sending data, open an elevated command window and run the following command: “iperf –c x.x.x.x –w 2m –t 30s –i 1s”. Replace the x.x.x.x with the IP address of the server from step 2.
Step 4. Review the data returned on the server from step 3. The output should look similar to the below text:
Note: You will need to open port 5001 on the iperf server.
Conclusion:
In short, as explained above you can find out the actual network speed and compare with the advertised speed. This is always helpful to find out before you commit to leasing/renting the servers.
We have tested the following Data Centre* and Web Hosting Companies* and found that they are having more or less the same advertised network speeds.
Note: Results are not affected by affiliate income. Also, this list is not a comprehensive list covering all the Web hosts. Feel free to suggest hosts which you find are having no or marginal difference in network speeds.