What is iperf3?

iPerf3 is a speedtest tool that can be easily deployed on your local network. The value in this is that you may isolate your speed tests within the LAN, ensuring that the results of your speed testing are not affected by external factors such as ISP-related issues. Further, you may isolate specific network equipment and clients by running speed tests directly between local peers.

Getting started

iPerf3 is shipped by default on our access points and routers to enable seamless performance testing and diagnostics for your networks. The most effective way to use the tool is to enable SSH according to this article. This allows you to login to the network device directly, running a standard busybox shell. Use this capability to remote into the terminal of two Alta Labs network devices in your LAN.

In the first device, launch an iperf3 server:

iperf3 -s

In the second device, deploy a speedtest:

iperf3 -c <server_ip> --bidir -P 10 -t 30 -w 512k

The server IP will be the local address of the first network device where you created the server. This will launch a 30 second bi-directional speedtest, which means it will generate traffic for both the upload and download directions. 

Testing clients

While the above quick and easy setup can test throughput across your network devices, it won't tell you anything about a throughput issue with a client device. What you can do in this scenario is install iperf3 directly on your client device for further testing. You could even install it on multiple client devices in order to test throughput between them across any (or none) of our network devices.

Download and install iperf3 for your device here. You can use the same commands above from your terminal to perform speedtests.

Third-party tools

There are some third-party tools which may be easier or more convenient for your use-case or platform. Though we may list them here, we cannot provide additional support for them.

• iPerf3-WebUI: a browser-based graphical frontend to iperf3