How to check network speed of Linux by Command

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It is very easy to check local network speed in Windows but if you have putty access to Linux machine then we are facing issues to check the network speed. There are some tools are available to check network speed iin Linux but it is not possible to install this tools on client machine or our secured machine.

Network speed in linux is depend on the Ethernet card or network interface card which you are using for this machine. Might be there are multiple Ethernet cards already configured, we can check network speed for each separately.

Generally, Ethernet cards are configured. If we see the the output of below command then we will get all NICs.

root@hello:~# ifconfig -a eth0   Link encap:EthernetHWaddr 1c:6f:65:0b:00:eb           inet addr:10.136.25.42  Bcast:10.136.25.255  Mask:255.255.255.0           inet6 addr: fe80::1e6f:65ff:fe0b:eb/64 Scope:Link           UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1           RX packets:1133376 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0           TX packets:34516 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0           collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000           RX bytes:11234117 (113.8 MB)  TX bytes:9056744 (9.0 MB)           Interrupt:16 Memory:fc500000-fc520000 lo       Link encap:Local Loopback                inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.255.0.0           inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host           UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1           RX packets:20442 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0           TX packets:20442 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0           collisions:0 txqueuelen:0           RX bytes:2356951 (2.3 MB)  TX bytes:2356951 (2.3 MB) root@hello:~#

If we see in above output, there are two cards configured. But eth0 is the main. So we need to check network speed for it only.

For Ethernet card,

root@hello:~# ethtool eth0 | less

If this command is not found then go for below command

root@hello:~# dmesg  | grep -i duplex [   16.773492] e100e: eth0 NIC Link is Up 100 Mbps Full Duplex, Flow Control: None root@hello:~#

Above command will be helpful to check system is half duplex or full duplex. Dmesg command gives lots of information but it is not that much of useful for us just grep needed information.

                We can check network speed of wireless card and chipset information.

root@hello:~#lspci | grep -i wireless

                To test internet connection speed from the console over ssh command line, we need to install lftp and iperf packages. They are easily available. We can download rpm of them or install it from yum repository.

After installation, download or upload data by lftp, pget command or check network speed between two IPs by iperf command.

I got some useful information regarding this topic on one site. Please go through it.

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