Can you suggest software to measure the traffic carried by a local area
network? Can you direct me to an artificial network traffic generator?
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There are several on the market and price is certainly one factor! But it sounds like what you want to do may be done easily with SourceForge, which is designed to stress test networks. You can also use ping –t to have ping packets sent until you tell them to stop. A good switch that is manageable will allow you to see your statistics in real-time and many also have RMON to allow you to look at speeds. If you want to do a specific speed and specific traffic, look at Ixia. It will cost more, but the functionality is fantastic!
This was first published in April 2005