I turned-up a pair of 10GigE circuits a while back (with a different,
unnamed carrier).
They didn't perform too well. When I pushed them for assistance with
testing, they revealed that they had multiple IPERF transponders
scattered throughout their network.
They were not open to the public, but could be made available for short
periods of time (timer-based, requiring repeated re-authorization to use
them for an extended period).
It seems likely that Level3 has similar (or superior) testing
facilities. A call to some account executives may be required to open
the kimono.
Separately, the Super computer centers used to have speed-test servers
installed adjacent to their border routers. They were dedicated, tuned
hosts specifically for speed testing. One/more of them might be willing
to help you out. However, unless one of them happens to use Level3 for
commercial transit, your performance will be gated by the excess
intervening network(s) and under all circumstances, by the competing
traffic on their access circuit.
Finally, I echo the sentiments about avoiding disk I/O.
If you do use FTP download for testing, you may wish to write the local
output to the null device. Some ftp clients allow the null device to be
specified as the local output file when downloading files. On XP
command-line FTP, the device "Nul:" is accepted. On Un*x it is
/dev/null. The command-line client on Server 2003 et al does not seem
to accept Nul as the local destination file when downloading. (anyone
know the correct magic?) Remember to download multiple times;
assuming the source server has enough ram, it will cache the file in
memory during the first download and successive downloads in rapid
succession should be essentially memory-to-memory (if you're using a
null device on the receiving end)
Bob
Rick Ernst wrote:
Resent from my subscribed address. Hopefully this isn't a dupe to anybody.
---------------------------------------
I'm working on turning up our first GigE connection (400mbs CIR) and the
various online speedtests I'm aware of choke after about 100Mbs or so.
Does anybody know of testing sites that can handle higher bandwidth, or
have an ftp host or similar to test against?
I'm connected to Level3, backhauled to Seattle, WA.
Thanks,
Rick
