# Is there a LAN speedtest? (need answer about:fast!) **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 7, 2008, 4:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-lan-speedtest-need-answer-about-fast/459135 "2008-08-07T04:41:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Rhythmdvl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/85f322/32.png) [@Rhythmdvl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rhythmdvl)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2008, 4:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-lan-speedtest-need-answer-about-fast/459135/1 "2008-08-07T04:41:10Z")
I just replaced a few pieces of network equipment here to boost up to a Gigabit connection. Other than relying on what it says in the marketing materials, is there a way to get a readout of the actual connection speed? Something like one of the speedtests you can find on the net to check your **Inter** net connection, but for the **intra** net connection. When I open Network Connections in WinXP and look at the properties of the Local Area Connection, it says the speed is 1.0 Gbps. But that seems so … so _round_. Is there a way to check this on a Linux machine (Ubuntu)? What about on a Mac OSX machine? What about _between_ machines – that is, from one box, through the router, to another machine? Thanks, Rhythm ---
**Author:** ![VanillaGorilla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/f9ae1b/32.png) [@VanillaGorilla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VanillaGorilla)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2008, 6:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-lan-speedtest-need-answer-about-fast/459135/2 "2008-08-07T06:38:48Z")
I’m not aware of any programs that’ll do that for you, but you could always just copy a large file over the network, and see how long it takes. ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2008, 8:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-lan-speedtest-need-answer-about-fast/459135/3 "2008-08-07T08:42:14Z")
Can’t you just ping the IP of the other computer? That would send a packet of fixed length back and forth, and tell you how long it took to do that. It’s possible that the network is too fast to gather any useful information that way, my own 100Mbit LAN typically gives times of \<1ms when I ping my router with 32 byte packets… ---
**Author:** ![neutron\_star](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/51bf81/32.png) [@neutron\_star](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/neutron_star)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2008, 9:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-lan-speedtest-need-answer-about-fast/459135/4 "2008-08-07T09:10:03Z")
I haven’t tried them, but [this](http://nicolask.wordpress.com/2007/10/04/to-perform-end-to-end-lan-speed-test/) page recommends a few solutions.