Throughput Test & More

If you have ever validated a Wi-Fi upgrade in a quiet lab and then spent the next week explaining to users why “everything looks fine on our end,” you already know how this story ends. The lab test measured the PHY at its best. The real network lives and dies by airtime. This post is for Wi-Fi engineers. It is about understanding why that number collapses at 10:30 AM on a Tuesday, and how to test in a way that predicts what users will actually experience.

Under light load, almost any LAN or Wi-Fi system looks perfectly fine. The switch blinks, the AP purrs, and nothing seems wrong. But once you apply enough load, networks begin revealing their traits.

When you read “1 Gbps” on a spec sheet, it’s tempting to assume that applications will send and receive data at 1 Gbps. In practice, that almost never happens outside of a clean LAN.

You think your network’s solid—until you run a UDP test and it looks like half your packets vanished into thin air. Don’t panic. Nothing’s broken. UDP just plays by different rules.

So, you’ve been using iPerf for a decade and a half. It has become something of an industry standard, and that reputation is largely well-deserved. But…

If you’ve been around networks long enough, you know the feeling: You set up your test gear, run your favorite throughput tool, stare at...

All is well. Meanwhile, your VoIP calls are melting. Let’s be honest: we’ve all run a speedtest  in our browser at some point. Maybe you...