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How to measure throughput of a Wi-Fi link?

0

Hi,

I want to measure the throughput of a Wi-Fi Link created between a Wi-Fi module and my PC. The module is running a TCP server on it and acts as a Wi-Fi access point and the PC is running TCP client(At PC side I have used D-Link USB-WIFI dongle). I want to measure the throughput of that link. How Can I measure that with Help of Wire shark.?? Can you provide the method for it?? I have found on internet that Wireshark supports Throughput graph. Please suggest for my case how can I measure it??

asked 06 Jul '14, 23:21

Gunjan's gravatar image

Gunjan
16113
accept rate: 0%

Have you tried iperf?

(07 Jul '14, 07:34) Lekensteyn

One Answer:

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I want to measure the throughput of that link

Unfortunately you cannot 'measure' the throughput of the 'link' with Wireshark only, as Wireshark won't send traffic, all it can do is to watch the traffic on the 'line/link' and then calculate some statistics. However that will give you no information at all about the (possible) throughput of that 'link', as the measured throughput is only that what was on the line at that time, so if there was only a connection that sent data with 1 Mbit/s you will see exactly that.

So, what you can do to actually measure the throughput is to use specialized tools for that purpose, like iperf (jperf) or similar tools. They will measure show the max. possible throughput over that link, by sending test data. Obviously you can also monitor that traffic with Wireshark to get an additional view.

Regards
Kurt

answered 08 Jul '14, 06:48

Kurt%20Knochner's gravatar image

Kurt Knochner ♦
24.8k1039237
accept rate: 15%

Thanks Kurt,

The specialized tool-iperf which you have mentioned here must be run on two PCs which are connected to a WiFi access point(in my case I have a Wi-Fi module). Correct me if I am wrong.

If it is true then that is not the case I want to get the throughput. I want to measure the throughput when I transfer the data only between a PC and a module(module has TCP server running on it and the client on the PC will try to send the data). Please suggest if you have any thing.

Regards, Gunjan

(09 Jul '14, 05:17) Gunjan

tool-iperf which you have mentioned here must be run on two PCs

Yes, that correct. iperf must run on two hosts, one is the client and the other is the server.

Please suggest if you have any thing.

Hm.. I would need more information about the 'module'. What kind of device is that?

(09 Jul '14, 05:24) Kurt Knochner ♦