Monitoring network throughput can help understand how your network is performing, enable you to better react to bottlenecks, help improve network planning, and lead to more effective network troubleshooting. We show you the best network throughput monitoring and testing tools.
Updated: May 30, 2024
Network throughput is the amount of data that is transmitted through a given network medium over a given amount of time.
For example, an Ethernet connection that has a throughput of 30 Mbps is transferring 30 Megabits per second.
Based on the definition above, we can see that throughput helps us understand and quantify network performance.
Network performance is often the difference between a productive day and an unproductive one. Given that, the need to measure and monitor throughput becomes clear.
Here is our list of the best network throughput monitoring and testing tools:
Let’s dive into the basics of network throughput and then provide an overview of some of the more popular network throughput monitoring solutions available on the market today. You can also check out our post on bandwidth monitoring tools and learn about the difference between throughput and bandwidth.
The differences between network throughput and bandwidth can be confusing to many. This is understandable given how the terms are generally used and that they deal with the same subject (amount of data transmitted over a given medium).
In short, bandwidth is the maximum amount of data that can go through a given medium and throughput is the amount of data that actually goes through that medium.
If you’re shopping for internet service, keep in mind you pay your Internet Service Provider (ISP) for bandwidth and get throughput.
In practice, throughput will always be less than your bandwidth. Additionally, your throughput at a given point in time will usually not be your maximum throughput. For example, if everyone in the office is streaming high-definition video a lot more data is being transmitted than if everyone was just sending plain text emails.
One of the most helpful ways to conceptualize bandwidth and throughput is the highway analogy. Bandwidth is the number of lanes on a highway while throughput is the cars traveling on that highway. Adding lanes (bandwidth) could improve traffic speeds, but it wouldn’t solve all your speed problems. On a highway, collisions and slow-moving vehicles can slow things down. Similarly, on a network, collisions, latency, and overhead can cause delays that aren’t necessarily solved by adding bandwidth.
There are multiple abbreviations thrown around when discussing throughput. All the different measurements somehow refer to an amount of data (usually bits or bytes) over a period of time (usually seconds). Understanding what the most popular measurements actually mean can help you better understand throughput. Below is a quick breakdown of some of the common measurements and terminology related to throughput.
One of the key takeaways here is: 1 MB is eight times more than 1 Mb. The same goes for GB vs Gb. Keep that in mind when comparing throughput statistics and ISP service plans.
Latency can have a big impact on throughput. Latency is the amount of time it takes data to traverse a given path. If we think back to our highway analogy, the amount of time it takes to travel across the highway is latency. That wouldn’t matter too much if all traffic was one way, but when you start to think about it, you begin to understand how it can impact throughput. TCP relies heavily on acknowledgments, which means a receiver must acknowledge a sender for the transmissions to proceed. If it takes a long time for the packets to get back to the sender, there will be a lot of wasted time and lower throughput.
High latency can occur for a variety of reasons, from bottlenecks to the number of hops between destinations to physical distance between sites.
If a TCP packet is dropped, it will need to be resent. This redundancy negatively impacts throughput. A sender will know that a packet needs to be resent based on timeouts or lack of acknowledgment for a given packet(s). Packet loss can occur for a number of reasons including high latency, jitter (inconsistent speeds on a connection), hardware and connection issues, or software bugs.
There’s no one-size-fits-all answer to this question. A number of moving parts affect throughput, so every situation is unique. With current technology, latency, and packet overhead being what they are, you won’t get speeds that match the bandwidth you purchase from your ISP.
As a “best-case scenario” reference, this CableFree article took a deep dive into maximum network throughput and determined that a 1 Gbps Ethernet connection has a potential for 94% efficiency (i.e. 940 Mbps). Enabling Jumbo Frames bumps the potential up to 99% (990 Mbps).
In a word: measuring throughput helps you resolve complaints about the network being “slow”. This is because throughput measurements help you better understand a network connection and its real-world performance. Throughput monitoring can help with:
Getting a baseline of your existing throughput will help you to spot peaks and troughs in volume. If you don’t intend to add on any new services to the network, your next task will be to ensure that there are is sufficient available capacity for trend growth in traffic volumes. If you are launching an expansion project, then you should expect increased demand on your network infrastructure.
In both cases, it helps to use a tool that can replay real traffic data and also generate extra traffic volumes to check that the bandwidth that you have available will be able to cope with that new demand.
Capacity planning tools such as the SolarWinds Flow Tool Bundle come in handy in these testing scenarios. The Bundle includes three tools that work with the Cisco-invented NetFlow v5 system. When you turn on NetFlow capabilities on your Cisco router, it will forward all packet headers to a collector. You can also use NetFlow to query the router and get aggregated data out of it.
The Bundle includes an interface to turn the NetFlow capabilities on your routers on and off. A second utility will replay captured traffic around your network and a third tool in the bundle will generate fake traffic to send around the network, testing the bandwidth capacity of all of your equipment and network software as well.
With an idea of what throughput is and what affects it, we’ll now talk about things that can be done to improve throughput. Again, there’s no one-size-fits-all answer; it’s important to understand the cause of your throughput problems to effectively address them. Below are some common methods employed to improve throughput.
We reviewed the market for throughput monitoring and testing tools and analyzed the options based on the following criteria:
ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer offers constant network traffic monitoring plus analysis tools. You can use this system to ensure that all of your network devices are contactable and get the package to send you an alert if a device does not respond.
Key Features:
ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer is the major rival to the SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer. This package includes systems to communicate with network devices and extract the operations statistics that they store. The system also includes a protocol analyzer that enables specific application traffic to be identified. That function is important if you hope to implement traffic shaping measures to improve the delivery of interactive, time-sensitive traffic. The tool also helps to implement those measures through mechanisms such as queuing.
You can see the traffic throughput on each link and get that automatically compared to the capacity of the hardware so that you can see when capacity is running short. The system has the capabilities to operate in a multi-vendor environment ensuring that it can communicate with the switches and routers of all the major providers through the use of Netflow, sFlow, jFlow, IPFIX, NetStream, and AppFlow.
The package lets you run tests and look at past performance on time series graphs. With these insights, you can implement traffic shaping measures to work out which applications are the bandwidth hogs and which switches would benefit from queuing so that interactive traffic doesn’t get held up. The system provides Cisco NBAR and CBQoS for these purposes.
ManageEngine produces three editions of the Network Analyzer, which should make it appealing to businesses of all sizes. However, the Free edition, which could attract small businesses is limited to monitoring three interfaces, which barely reaches the definition of what a network is. The Professional edition covers a single network and the Enterprise edition can monitor a WAN, so mid-sized and large businesses would be interested in the NetFlow Analyzer.
You can host the software for ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer on Windows Server or Linux. The system is also available in the AWS Marketplace to run on your account on that platform. Try a 30-day free trial of the on-premises version.
Site24x7 Network Traffic Monitoring uses flow protocols to track the capacity utilization on every link on a network. This system is part of a cloud platform of system monitoring and management tools that provide full-stack observability.
Key Features:
Site24x7 Network Traffic Monitoring is delivered from the cloud. It is easy to set up and run because the tool installs an agent on the network that it being monitored. This installation process is part of the onboarding process and results in automatic detection of all devices on the network, creating a network inventory and a topology map.
The on-site agent for the Site24x7 communicates with switches and routers to extract activity data. This process is implemented with flow protocols. These are the NetFlow, IPFIX, sFlow, J-Flow, cFlow, AppFlow, and NetStream protocols. Data is uploaded to the Site24x7 server where it is organized into tables and graphs.
The package includes an alerting system that raises a notification if traffic patterns change suddenly. Such changes can indicate an overloaded or faulty network device. Network device status tracking services in the Site24x7 package will illuminate any system problems further.
This system assesses the capacity of each device interface and tracks traffic throughput per link. The tool will raise an alert if a switch or router gets overloaded and will show which protocols, workstations, and external sources are channeling the most traffic onto the network. So, the monitoring system is suitable for use by any business that has a network.
The Site24x7 platform bundles many system monitoring and management tools into its plans. There are plans available for many specializations, such as infrastructure tracking and website monitoring. There is also a plan available for managed service providers. Try out Site24x7 by accessing a 30-day free trial.
ExtraHop is an enterprise-level monitoring solution with support for advanced features like contextual intelligence, forensic investigation, real-time analytics, and more.
Key Features:
The ExtraHop Reveal(x) system is a classic network monitoring service that includes the discovery and documentation of all network devices. This package combines network device status monitoring and traffic tracking. This system can track traffic across sites and also between sites and cloud platforms. The tool is also able to perform security monitoring simultaneously with its traffic monitoring.
ExtraHop offers monitoring solutions for security, network performance, and the cloud. The section of this enterprise software we’re focused on here is its network performance monitoring capabilities.
One of the major selling points of ExtraHop’s network performance solution is the ability to automatically detect and correlate network issues, which should help reduce mean time to resolution. Part its solution includes detailed metrics and charts covering average bandwidth utilization, average throughput, throughput by protocol, “top talkers” (endpoints with the highest average throughput), and more. If you’re looking for an enterprise-level solution to your throughput monitoring problems, you may want to take a look at ExtraHop.
ExtraHop doesn’t publish its price list and its cloud-based system is very sophisticated, which implies that it is probably out of the budget of small businesses. This traffic monitor is combined with security monitoring, it can track activity on multiple sites and it can track traffic between sites and cloud systems. So, this is a good choice for complicated large business systems that include resources from many different SaaS providers and include users working remotely and at multiple branch offices.
You can demo ExtraHop directly from your browser (Contact info is requested, but demo access is given immediately after).
If you need to check the throughput from a given computer or mobile device with a web browser, our very own speed test is a great way to do so and help raise money for charity.
Key Features:
Comparitech Speed Test is one of the services on our own website, so our urge to recommend it is easy to understand. This is a free tool that is very easy to use. Furthermore, the website donates to charity every time that the Speed Test service is used. So, you can do good while testing your internet connection speed.
Our speed test will check your current download speed, upload speed, and ping response times. I’ve found that online speed tests too are a good way to determine if issues you are having with a given app are related to your network speeds or not (e.g. to check if you meet Netflix’s Internet Connection Speed Recommendations). Additionally, for each test (max one per user), Comparitech will donate one cent to charity.
This tool is an on-demand system. That means it isn’t meant for use by corporations for constant internet service testing. This is useful for a quick check from a third-party service to check on the accuracy of a regular connection performance testing system or for remote workers to perform their own troubleshooting tests when connecting in to the company network. The system is also good for private individuals to investigate why they aren’t getting downloads and Web page loading at a suitable speed.
The SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer Pack is actually two SolarWinds products bundled together: Network Performance Monitor (NPM) and NetFlow Traffic Analyzer (NTA). You can learn more about each of these modules in our NPM and NTA reviews.
Key Features:
The SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer Pack gives you two network monitoring systems that provide both network device status checks and traffic pattern tracking. Although it is possible to use the Network Performance Monitor by itself, the NetFlow Traffic Analyzer will only run if the NPM is also present. Therefore, if you want to perform traffic analysis with SolarWinds products, you have to buy both of these products, which is what this pack offers.
In short, NPM is one of the most popular pieces of enterprise monitoring software offered by SolarWinds and does a lot of the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) and up/down monitoring you would expect from a Network Management System (NMS). Adding NTA to the mix enables support for monitoring the various flow protocols like NetFlow, sFlow, jFlow, etc. Combined, these two tools become a holistic, feature-rich, throughput monitoring solution.
You can demo NTA directly from your browser here. You can also download a 30-day free trial of the Network Bandwidth Analyzer Pack which includes both tools.
The combination of two big SolarWinds systems provides a lot of monitoring services, which is probably only going to appeal to larger companies. The full package of screens presents a lot of information and you need a team of technicians in order to get the full value out of this package. Extensive monitoring automation, thanks to an alerting system means that your technicians don’t have to watch the screens all the time. The NetFlow Traffic Analyzer provides full support for the implementation of traffic shaping measures, which will help you to squeeze extra value out of your current network assets.
Iperf is a free, open-source tool used for taking active measurements of throughput on a network. It is officially supported on CentOS, FreeBSD, and macOS. According to its Github page, a number of other *nix based operating systems have been reported successfully using Iperf, and I was able to get it running on Linux Mint 17.1 without issue. Iperf can measure TCP (Transmission Control Protocol, UDP (User Datagram Protocol), and SCTP (Stream Control Transmission Protocol) throughput.
Iperf uses a client/server configuration, meaning the software needs to be installed on both endpoints for you to measure throughput. You can download and install Iperf here (Note: I was able to use apt-get install iperf on Mint 17.1).
Key Features:
Iperf is a great option for techie administrators who like command-line troubleshooting tools. This is a free system but it doesn’t offer any user-friendly graphics. The tool is only able to measure traffic between two endpoints that you control.
In the example below, I ran Iperf in server mode by executing the command iperf –s, then connected to the server to measure TCP throughput by executing the command iperf –c 10.0.2.15 (10.0.2.15 was the IP address of the Iperf server). For more on Iperf, check out its Github page.
Iperf is more of a connection testing tool than a traffic measurement system. You can use it to generate your own traffic and test a link on the network or a path that runs over multiple links. The tool is free and it is available for Linux.
NetCPS is a Windows Command Line utility that also follows the client/server paradigm for measuring throughput. It has been around for a long time, but can still be useful on many modern Windows operating systems (it worked well on Windows 10 for me).
Key Features:
NetCPS is a Windows tool that performs more or less the same function as Iperf. This utility generates 100 MB of data, which you can send from one endpoint to another. If the route crosses a switch or a router, you will be able to test the availability of that device. The result will tell you the transfer speed of that traffic burst.
NetCPS is freeware, with the one exception that it is NOT permitted for governmental or military use. You can download, learn more about, and view the source code of NetCPS here.
In the example below, I used NetCPS to measure throughput on a local PC’s loopback address. First, from the directory where the NetCPS.exe file was loaded, I executed the command NetCPS.exe –s to place NetCPS in server mode, then in a separate cmd.exe Window I executed the command NetCPS.exe 127.0.0.1 to test the loopback IP address.
NetCPS is a command line tool and it is free to use. This is a handy tool to have for network troubleshooting. Government institutions and the military are banned from using this tool.
NetPerf is a CLI tool used on *nix operating systems (it also compiles on Windows) similar to Iperf that was originally developed by Hewlett Packard. While it’s not technically open source, it is free to use and a fairly popular tool for measuring throughput and benchmarking network speeds.
For more information on Netperf, check out the manual and the Netperf Github.
Key Features:
Netperf is a network testing tool. This utility is free to use. The Netperf system lets you test links or a whole route between two points on a network. It reports on throughput speeds and it is meant to be a benchmarking system. That means you use Netperf to get a standard throughput speed and then measure applications against that. You can run UDP or TCP connections to specific ports.
Like NetCPS and Iperf, Netperf uses a client/server model. You can start the server using the command netserver –p and then connect from a client using the command netperf –H -p . In the example below, we started the server on port 15222 from a host with IP address 10.0.2.15.
Like Iperf and NetCPS, Netperf is a handy tool for network administrators who want to run ad hoc tests. The system was written for Unix and related operating systems, such as Linux and macOS. However, it will also run on Windows.
That was our crash course on throughput and list of throughput measurement tools. Did we leave anything out? Do you have any questions about the tools we mentioned here? Let us know in the comment section below.
