I am looking for multiple pieces of software to test the performance of one of my firewalls. The software in question needs to be compatible with Linux but other than that, I don't have many requirements.

Here is what I have discovered so far:

Throughput: iperf and netperf appear to be very popular in this category. Is there anything better or more realistic out there?

Latency: I have read that hrping provides accurate results for RTD.

Jitter: I've yet to find any software package that specifically mesasures jitter.

Are there any better alternatives to what I have mentioned above? I have read that NetFlow and its variations are good for measuring some of these metrics, but is there anything better?

  • Can you explain what would be better than the software you have mentioned above? Are there any specific features you are looking for? Does price matter or does it have to be free? – Tom Apr 5 '16 at 12:58
  • I'm not sure if anything would be better, that's part of the reason why I'm asking. I would prefer for the software to be free. If what I mentioned works well, I'm happy to go ahead and use that but I've yet to find anything that accurately measures Jitter yet. – user Apr 6 '16 at 10:24

Jitter: iperf shows this when using UDP.


iperf -u -s


iperf -u -c server_ip

results in something like

[ 3] 0.0-10.0 sec 11.8 MBytes 9.86 Mbits/sec 2.617 ms 9/ 8409 (0.11%)

Where 2.617 ms should be the jitter, the following the packet loss.

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