Traffic Meter For Mac

25-03-2021 admin

AlternativeTo is a free service that helps you find better alternatives to the products you love and hate. The site is made by Ola and Markus in Sweden, with a lot of help from our friends and colleagues in Italy, Finland, USA, Colombia, Philippines, France and contributors from all over the world. That's right, all the lists of alternatives are crowd-sourced, and that's what makes the data. Network Traffic Interception. Debookee is able to intercept and monitor the traffic of any device in the same subnet, thanks to a Man-in-the-middle attack (MITM) It allows you to capture data from mobile devices on your Mac (iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry.) or Printer, TV, Fridge (Internet of Things!) without the need of a proxy.

We’ve all been there—end users are complaining about slow internet, but you thought you had plenty of bandwidth. Over the years, I’ve come to realize you probably do, in most cases. In fact, throwing additional bandwidth at the issue is often an expensive Band-Aid. What you need is to get to the root of performance problems.

If you want to see what’s using your bandwidth, or simply check the bandwidth of your server, you can benefit from implementing a bandwidth monitoring tool. There are several options on the market, varying from the rudimentary to the more analytical. Some are free, and some come with a price tag. What matters is finding the right fit for your business. My overall favorite? SolarWinds^® Network Bandwidth Analyzer Pack.

This comprehensive package allows users to monitor bandwidth as well as identify, diagnose, and resolve network performance issues with ease via its highly intuitive dashboard. The best part? You can try them both by downloading a 30-day, fully functional free trial.

What Is Network Bandwidth Monitoring?
Why Is Network Bandwidth Monitoring Important?
Finding the Right Bandwidth Monitoring Tool
The Takeaway

What Is Network Bandwidth Monitoring?

To understand network bandwidth monitoring, it’s important to take a few steps back and paint the full picture of bandwidth usage in general. Bandwidth refers to a network’s capacity to transfer data between devices or the internet within a given span of time. Higher bandwidth allows data to be transferred at a faster rate and for more devices to connect at once.

I like to refer to networks as highways and bandwidth as the lanes. The more lanes you have on a highway, the more easily traffic can move. The same thing is true of a network. If too many users are watching videos or downloading files—any type of high-data activity—your network speed will lag. This is why you may often notice a slower connection in public places full of users, with their laptops open and tablets in hand, all trying to use the internet at once.

Bandwidth capacity is typically determined by the connection type. Digital subscriber line (DSL) internet relies on telephone lines and has limited capabilities. Cable internet is faster, but fiber-optic speeds trump them all. The exact amount and type of bandwidth your company needs depend on the size of the business, but it’s safe to assume any operation brimming with laptops, phones, tablets, and other devices should be equipped with substantial bandwidth capacity if they want to provide a fast and efficient experience for all end users.

Why Is Network Bandwidth Monitoring Important?

Typically, it takes a network interruption to alert IT technicians to a problem. At that point, they are forced to be reactive rather than proactive. But if you always have your finger on the pulse of the network, you have a distinct advantage—you can spot and address issues more quickly because you know where to look.

This is where network bandwidth monitoring comes into play. With the right network bandwidth monitoring tool, you can:

Identify bandwidth needs. While servers can be reconfigured if needed, it’s best to calculate your company’s bandwidth requirements at the start to avoid major overhauls down the line. This means determining the bandwidth needs of your enterprise’s local area network (LAN) or wide area network (WAN). A network usage monitor will allow you to monitor WAN bandwidth and LAN bandwidth, glean a comprehensive understanding of the bandwidth capacity your network requires, and better evaluate when it may be time to upgrade your bandwidth—for example, if your company converts to laptops from PCs or adds a new division of employees. When you’re monitoring network performance on an ongoing basis, you’re better prepared to spot trends indicating a need for greater bandwidth far in advance. Put simply, planning for an upgrade should never take place as the result of a crisis.
Boost network performance. The solutions to bandwidth complaints are often obvious, once you know where to look. Bandwidth analyzers provide a complete picture of your bandwidth and network health, empowering you to identify the applications using the most bandwidth and how they’re being used, spot bottlenecks at a glance, analyze and monitor traffic patterns, track response time, availability, and uptime of routers, switches, and other SNMP-enabled devices, and drill down into all of these details as needed. This allows you to be proactive about spotting emerging problems and quickly get to the root of a performance issue before end users complain and productivity comes to a grinding halt.
Save your budget. While it’s sometimes necessary to add bandwidth, it can be an expensive undertaking. Before you put extra spend behind your bandwidth, I always recommend leveraging a bandwidth monitoring tool to gather and communicate both granular and big-picture network usage information. Monitoring allows you to head off issues and troubleshoot slowdowns without the added investment in more bandwidth.
Enhance security. Hackers are abounding, ready to jump on an opportunity to inject malware into your company’s system and prey on highly sensitive data and information. Monitoring bandwidth usage will enable you to readily identify suspicious activity and hosts by providing a detailed snapshot of potentially malicious traffic flows. Armed with this level of insight, you can stop hackers in their tracks and protect your company from a data breach.

Finding the Right Bandwidth Monitoring Tool

A wide variety of network traffic monitoring tools and bandwidth monitors are on the market. Some are more robust and comprehensive in their service offerings, while others are lean. Some involve a fair amount of spend, and others are free or open-source. Finding the right fit for your business boils down to the level of monitoring you hope to achieve and what your company’s budget (or lack thereof) will allow. Here are my picks for the top 9 tools to monitor bandwidth and network usage:

1. Network Bandwidth Analyzer Pack

I’m a big fan of this bandwidth monitoring software bundle from SolarWinds because of its ability to detect, diagnose, and resolve network performance issues before end users can begin finger-pointing.

Network Bandwidth Analyzer Pack (BAP) combines the power of SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor and NetFlow Traffic Analyzer (which I’ll dive into later), equipping you with the resources needed to monitor bandwidth use by application, protocol, and IP address group. Leverage the platform to view both IPv4 and IPv6 flow records and monitor Cisco NetFlow, Juniper J-Flow, sFlow, Huawei NetStream, and IPFIX flow data, allowing you to easily identify the applications and protocols consuming the most bandwidth.

More than a net meter bandwidth monitor, the toolset is equipped to not only display traffic patterns but also correlate them into a visual, usable format via a web-based interface featuring bold charts and graphs. The interactive and highly intuitive dashboard boasts a drag-and-drop feature, so you can easily connect the dots between varying performance metrics spanning months, days, or even minutes. Drilling down in this way is essential for any team looking to quickly identify service provider issues and applications hogging the bandwidth.

From a security standpoint, BAP will automatically alert you when application traffic suddenly increases, decreases, or disappears completely. High traffic spikes indicate cyberattackers at work, so having access to this type of instant update can help you act fast and stop hackers before they unleash too much damage. Unexpected decreases in traffic, as well as a complete lack of traffic, are evidence of a larger performance problem.

2. NetFlow Traffic Analyzer

NetFlow Traffic Analyzer (NTA) is another solid offering from the team at SolarWinds. This comprehensive platform is slightly less robust than Network Bandwidth Analyzer Pack (of which it’s an integral component) but no less sophisticated.

With NTA, you get all of the bandwidth monitoring, network analysis, and intelligent alerts in Bandwidth Analyzer Pack, minus the in-depth wireless and multi-vendor network monitoring and network performance baselines.

In other words, if you’re looking for an in-depth, single-vendor network architecture bandwidth analyzer, SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is for you. The platform features the visual correlation I love, complete with the drag-and-drop network performance analysis dashboard so you can drill into any network element and analyze traffic patterns over months, days, or minutes. With NetFlow Traffic Analyzer, you can quickly identify bandwidth use by application, protocol, and IP address group to identify where bandwidth is being zapped. This level of analysis, paired with customizable network traffic reports displaying historical data and identifying peak bandwidth usage, empower you to adjust policies for better bandwidth management and avoid spending extra on additional bandwidth.

Beyond these features, if your business regularly uses cloud-based applications, like VoIP or e-commerce systems, the software can also be leveraged to verify prioritized traffic moves smoothly through the network. This is an essential part of CBQoS policy optimization.

3. PRTG Network Monitor

PRTG Network Monitor from Paessler is a comprehensive yet strikingly simple tool for monitoring your entire IT infrastructure. This internet usage monitoring software allows you to measure all the traffic in your network by monitoring the data directly on your routers. PRTG Network Monitor also helps you determine how much bandwidth your devices and applications are using and monitor heavy overloads, so you can quickly and accurately pinpoint bottlenecks. Depending on your network and hardware, you can use different protocols, like SNMP, flow, or packet sniffing, to leverage the tool and determine who or what is using your bandwidth. Once you’ve identified the root of the problem, you can act swiftly, putting new bandwidth usage management policies in place without having to put additional spend behind greater bandwidth.

This all-in-one solution goes beyond bandwidth analysis and monitors SQL, Exchange, and server software as well as all your cloud and virtualization applications, making it an elaborately in-depth service offering. You can even use the tool as a network speed monitor.

The Windows-based PRTG tool comes in two editions: a free version for monitoring up to 100 sensors and a commercial edition for those who need to monitor a greater number of sensors. But depending on the volume of sensors you need to monitor, the software can quickly become a drain on your budget.

4. NetFlow Analyzer

ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer touts itself as a complete traffic analytics tool, and for good reason. The platform leverages flow technologies, including NetFlow, sFLow, IPFIX, NetStream, J-Flow, and Appflow, to provide real-time visibility into network bandwidth performance. Once you have access to analytics, you can classify applications hogging your network bandwidth and even reconfigure your policies via application-level QoS shaping, helping you regain control over those bandwidth-hungry applications.

With real-time insights and detailed analytics letting you drill down and discover traffic patterns and device performance as well as historical bandwidth reports, you’ll have the information you need for more informed capacity planning. You’ll know when it’s time to grow your bandwidth, and when it’s best to implement a new policy or shut down a specific device.

The security features of this bandwidth monitoring tool are also worth noting. NetFlow Analyzer’s Continuous Stream Mining Engine helps you detect external and internal threats, track network anomalies, and identify zero-day intrusions, so you can jump into action when needed.

5. FREE Real-Time Bandwidth Monitor

While many of the more robust products come with a price tag, there are some great free options for IT technicians looking to capture the basics. SolarWinds Real-Time Bandwidth Monitor is one of those tools. This free bandwidth usage meter allows you to check server bandwidth usage in real-time and monitor multiple interfaces simultaneously.

All bandwidth usage data is displayed visually via graphs to help you perform more critical analysis. You can even leverage the platform to create custom bandwidth thresholds, so you’ll receive an alert as soon as usage is out of bounds.

This tool is free and straightforward to use. Simply enter the IP address of the network device and associated SNMP credentials, then select the interfaces you want to monitor, and a graph will populate with bandwidth usage in real-time—no complicated install processes to worry about here.

However, the tool won’t tell you which application is eating up your bandwidth or exactly how it’s doing so. But if simple bandwidth polling is what you’re after, then you can’t go wrong with Real-Time Bandwidth Monitor.

6. FREE Network Analyzer & Bandwidth Monitoring Bundle

Another high-quality, no-cost bandwidth monitoring option is SolarWinds Network Analyzer & Bandwidth Monitoring Bundle. This free tool combines two popular free network monitoring tools offered by SolarWinds: Real-Time NetFlow Analyzer and Real-Time Bandwidth Monitor (which I already reviewed above).

Leveraging both tools makes it easy to quickly identify the types of network traffic by flow data capture—including NetFlow, J-FLow, and sFlow data—and provides multi-interface monitoring for bandwidth usage in real-time. It offers a bit more detail than some of the other free options out there by allowing you to see traffic by conversation, app, domain, and endpoint.

Equipped with this level of information, you’ll be better prepared to quickly diagnose network problems and avoid bottlenecks. The Network Analyzer & Bandwidth Monitoring Bundle can also record up to 60 minutes of data, a great feature for those looking to review some data trends.

I’m a big fan of this option, especially for those looking to dip their toes into network monitoring. Once you’re comfortable leveraging the data in this free tool, SolarWinds makes it easy to take it to the next level and glean more in-depth traffic analysis and performance statistics by upgrading to Network Bandwidth Analyzer Pack.

7. ntopng

Formerly called ntop, ntopng (“ng” is for “next generation”) is a simple, to-the-point traffic probe that uses libpcap, a tool for packet capture, to report on network traffic and usage. The platform allows users to sort network traffic according to a wide range of criteria, including IP address, port, L7 protocol, autonomous systems, and more. Ntopng displays network traffic and active hosts in real time, so you can stay up to date while producing historical reports to review data and better identify trends. Although this reporting capability isn’t as robust as some of the other products I’ve discussed, it does a fair job and can track data such as application protocols and throughput.

ntopng has a commercial version called ntopng pro with some additional bells and whistles, but the open-source version is good enough to quickly gain insight into traffic behavior. It can also integrate with external monitoring applications such as Nagios for alerting and provide data for monitoring.

8. Cacti

Cacti is mainly an open-source, front-end graphing tool for system data, but it can also handle data collection. The software leverages RRDTool, a data logging and graphing system, so you can collect data from almost any infrastructure element, including load balancers and servers, routers and switching systems, firewalls, and so on, and display it in different graphical formats.

Cacti also supports SNMP polling, which itself covers a wide range of network devices. This feature allows you to monitor bandwidth usage by graphing it on an interface. The simple yet powerful line graphs Cacti produces can show spikes and dips in traffic, but they don’t offer the thorough performance analysis of the graphs and charts featured in many of the paid options listed here. This is a smart, free option for those who want a high-level view of their bandwidth. It can be installed on either Unix or Windows OS.

9. BandwidthD

BandwidthD is a free, starkly simple tool for bandwidth monitoring. While the program hasn’t been updated since 2013, it still maintains a steady stream of network and traffic data by tracking usage of TCP/IP network subnets and building HTML files, complete with graphs to display utilization. When launching the platform, you may find it a little finicky—you’ll need a relatively sound knowledge base for setting up manual configurations. But it’s effective if all you’re looking for is a no-cost, straightforward solution.

BandwidthD runs on most platforms, including Windows. Just remember it requires winpcap or libpcap for Linux and Unix users.

The Takeaway

Regardless of size or budget, all companies should implement bandwidth monitoring. Monitoring your bandwidth will help you boost network performance and identify bandwidth needs, potentially save your business money, and add an extra layer of security to your everyday activities. With the right tool, you will be empowered to quickly identify performance issues and even stop them in their tracks, before they bring end-user productivity to a standstill.

While there are a number of good bandwidth monitoring tools on the market, my favorite is by far SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer Pack. This robust offering makes it easy to drill down into the data and analyze your applications and bandwidth traffic via a clear, intuitive web-based dashboard. It’s well worth the investment and could save your company from having to invest in additional bandwidth. If you’re still unsure, I recommend downloading a free trial or starting with one of the free tools like Network Analyzer & Bandwidth Monitoring Bundle.

Basics of Traffic Generators

Traffic generators are a way of injecting traffic into a network for utilization by other devices.

A traffic generator is meant to look like a device on a network, so it can target devices in receipt of traffic. This means it will have a physical, typically higher-level address.

When implemented, a traffic generator attaches to the network via the same interface as other devices to establish brand-new packets. Certain traffic generators may also need to respond to traffic from other devices—for example, when they need to establish an Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) in an IP network or a TCP connection.

Basically, a traffic generator is a tool designed for evaluating the performance of devices under test or systems under test. Traffic generators send RAW packets through certain ports and collect the following data: jitter and latency values, lost packets, TX/RX rates, and out-of-order packets. A traffic generator might be used in a similar way to a bandwidth test utility and can also be used to create packets routed to the packet generator.

Basics of Simulator Stress Test Tools

There are some similarities between traffic generators and simulator stress test tools. The purpose of a simulator stress test tool is to test the performance of a network. When combined with a network traffic generator, it can give you insight into how a network will cope with varying levels of stress and load. A stress test tool can also be used to identify issues like slow-loading or unresponsive web pages.

There are three main types of load simulation: HTTP/S-based, real browser-based, and headless.

HTTP/S-based tests, which were popular earlier on in the digital age, involve the test driver executing service requests and parsing responses. This type of test ignores the client-side scripts associated with modern Web 2.0 applications. Overall, HTTP/S tests aren’t as useful anymore, because they can’t cope with complex use cases at the protocol level.
Headless browser-based load simulation was designed in response to the increase in Web 2.0 technologies. Initial headless browsers included HtmlUnit, SlimerJS, and PhantomJS. Headless browsers are usually built from WebKit, which is the engine driving both Chrome and Safari. There are several advantages associated with headless browsers, including the fact that they run quickly without requiring a heavy GUI. They offer realistic user simulation, too, which is a big benefit.
Real browser-based load simulation takes into account the fact that Web 2.0 applications tend to be bursting with JavaScript, Flash, CSS, and AJAX. If you don’t have a full browser, it’s impossible to track the actual end-to-end response times for the entire web page. This type of load testing lets you verify the functionality of the site and the speed received by the end user. A standard real browser-based performance test tool collects load times for CSS, images, JavaScript, and more.

Best Traffic Generator Tools

Below are my rankings for the best network traffic generators and network stress test software, free and paid. I’ve included tools to suit a range of organizational needs to help you find the one that’s right for you.

WAN Killer is bundled into SolarWinds Engineer’s Toolset, a network software suite containing over 60 utilities. These have been designed to cover everything from network discovery and configuration to monitoring and troubleshooting. In addition to WAN Killer, SolarWinds ETS features a port scanner, SNMP sweep tool, switch port mapper, IP network browser, MAC address discovery, and ping sweep.

WAN Killer was designed to assist users in identifying and targeting specific network traffic. It does this by facilitating the generation of your own traffic. You can define a specific IP address or hostname, which the tool will then intentionally bombard with traffic. This process will give you insight into your network performance. You can even define the size and circuit bandwidth percentage, then create data for your WAN tests.

There’s much to like about this tool. You can proactively test network and load balancing by tracking UDP/TCP packets, which will give you insight into how your network performs under specific traffic load conditions, and you can study network activities without using real traffic. The tool takes a risk-free approach to interactively test connections and edit IP traffic, thereby generating the network load you’ve specified. WAN Killer is a flexible tool allowing you to adjust port numbers, packet size, and bandwidth percentage, as well as modify the Differentiated Services Code Point and Explicit Congestion Notification settings.

Once you’ve installed Engineer’s Toolset, you can access WAN Killer by visiting the Diagnostics folder. The launch process is quick and easy. Because WAN Killer supports application-wide settings, you won’t need to adjust settings every time network traffic is generated.

A massive benefit of Engineer’s Toolset is the quantity of tools it delivers. When combined, these tools enable you to effectively manage, troubleshoot, and monitor your entire network. Each one is easily accessible and contained within a single desktop console. There are some truly impressive tools in this bundle. Aside from WAN Killer, I particularly like Memory Monitor, CPU Monitor, Interface Monitor, Response Time Monitor, and TraceRoute.

Engineer’s Toolset features an automatic discovery tool, which will find all your connected network devices and create a network topology map. It can also track availability of devices, utilization of memory, CPU load, the performance of network paths, the latency of network paths, and interface stats. It’s extremely user friendly and dynamic. I especially like the topology maps and other graphical representations, which include pie charts and line graphs.

If you want to try WAN Killer Traffic Generator, download the fully functional 14-day free trial of Engineer’s Toolset.

Packet Sender is a free, open source application with no advertisements and no bundles. It’s capable of sending and receiving TCP, UDP, and SSL on your chosen ports, which enables customized testing. Servers and clients can run at the same time, so you can test in a streamlined and undisrupted way, and all data can be defined, whether in ASCII or HEX. This is a cross-platform tool for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Packet Sender uses a command line and a GUI, providing a lot of flexibility in terms of the interface you use. The command-line interface accompanies all versions of the application, so you’ll have access whenever you need it.

Packet Sender can be used for a range of activities, including the automation of testing through the use of its command-line tool and hotkeys. It also lets you test network APIs with the built-in UDP, TCP, and SSL clients, and analyzes malware with the UDP, TCP, and SSL servers. Even firewalls and connectivity can be tested. The tool accomplishes this by getting packet senders to communicate with each other.

By providing portable packet senders with predefined settings and packets to customers, Packet Sender is also a means of supporting tech. In addition, it allows you to conduct security research by sending SSL and then analyzing the resulting traffic log.

Packet Sender, available on GitHub, is a great way of controlling network-based devices with minimal manual input and labor. The network generator utility is an effective means of stress-testing devices, and you can use the cloud service to share, save, and collaborate. I like Packet Sender cloud for the way it facilitates collaboration. With it, you can even publicly display and distribute packets for collaboration, tutorials, and utilization by end users via URL.

Packet Sender offers mobile applications for both iOS and Android. These can be purchased at a small cost from either the Google Play store (for Android) or the Apple App Store (for iOS). The mobile applications are a nice touch, and they don’t incorporate any ads, analytics, or calls for reviews. Still, they’re limited in functionality.

Overall, Packet Sender is an effective network traffic generator and analyzer. It’s a great way of finding holes in your firewall, and its lack of a price tag is appealing. However, free and open source tools come with several disadvantages. They don’t tend to be as user friendly as other tools, and they can be less reliable. They’re also not especially suited to business needs. Still, if you want to give Packet Sender a try, downloading it is zero risk. I personally don’t think it’s as dynamic and usable as it could be, but for a free tool the functionalities are generous.

Nping is another popular open source program for network packet generation, response analysis, and response time analysis. With this tool, you can create your own custom packets for flexible protocol testing. Protocol headers can be configured to your liking, allowing you to essentially fine tune your testing approach.

Nping is multifunctional, being both a ping tool and great for RAW packet generation, denial-of-service attacks, tracert, and ARP poisoning. It includes “echo mode,” which enables advanced discovery and troubleshooting. In echo mode, you can see how network packets change when they’re in transit, both at the target machine and at the source.

Essentially, this mode breaks Nping down into two elements—the echo server and the echo client. The echo server is a network service for capturing packets and echoing them to the original client via a side TCP channel. The echo client undertakes the generation of the packets and the transmission of the packets to the server. This element is also responsible for receiving the echoed versions. I like echo mode because it gives you full visibility into the variances between how a packet is sent and how it’s received.

Echo mode is also great for troubleshooting any firewall or routing problems. You can use it to identify whether traffic is being dropped in transit and lost. Because the Nping echo protocol lets client and server interact across an encrypted channel, the security of Nping is highly dependable.

Nping also features custom TCP, UP, ICMP, and ARP packet generation, along with route tracing utilities, and is useful for detecting packet disruption and understanding firewall rules. This is a highly supportive program, with support for multiple target port and target host specifications, Ethernet frame generation, and IPv6. It offers unprivileged modes for non-root users and is fairly customizable.

Like Packet Sender, this tool could be more user friendly. And as with most open source and free network stress test software, it’s not suited to business needs. It’s available for Linux, Mac, and Windows and is simple to download and install. The source code is accessible from the download page.

Ostinato is a popular network traffic and packet generator. This tool has a friendly GUI and boasts a Python API for automating network tests. It allows you to create your own traffic streams and offers surprising customization capabilities. One of the things I like most about Ostinato is the user interface is well designed, with many dynamic graphical representations.

Ostinato boasts features covering a wide scope of functionalities, which makes it a versatile tool. And this high quantity of utilities doesn’t mean the developers have compromised on quality. The features are intelligently designed and easy for the average user to get a handle on. As I mentioned, you can create your own streams; you can also configure them in an in-depth way, with consideration of stream rates, bursts, and number of packets. This is a tool suited to network load testing and functional testing. It affords you the ability to visualize data on a “per stream” basis, giving you an accurate look at packet loss measurements at a granular level.

Ostinato is also great for achieving real-time network measurement and monitoring. Its efficient and economical design enables you to receive and transmit stats and rates at the level of the interface. There is also the fact that Ostinato is highly compatible and supportive. It covers most protocols, including VLAN, ARP, IPv4 and IPv6, IP in IP, TCP and UDP, ICMPv4 and ICMPv6, IGMP, MLD, IEEE 802.3 LLC, SNAP, and text-based protocols.

With Ostinato you can stack protocols in random order to test error cases and vary packet fields across packets at the runtime stage—for example, by changing the IP/MAC addresses. The tool features user-defined scripting, which can be utilized to substitute a protocol that hasn’t been implemented. You can open, edit, replay, and save PCAP files. And despite there being only one controller, you can have multiple agents.

Traffic Meter For Mac Download

All in all, this is a feature-heavy tool. There are, however, a few important functions Ostinato will not do. Among these, it should be noted Ostinato is stateless, which means it doesn’t support stateful connection-oriented TCP connections. Moreover, it’s not suitable for generating fake traffic and sending it to websites.

If you want to give Ostinato a try, you can download it here. There are three packages available. The first is for use on either Windows, Mac OS, or a single distribution of Linux. The second package is a desktop bundle available for all three—Windows, Mac OS, and Linux (it supports upward of seven Linux distributions). This package features free updates and example streams. The super bundle, package three, features all of the above, plus Live ISO and virtual appliance compatibility. Two add-ons—Python API and Turbo Transmit—are also available. Turbo Transmit gives you 10G, 25G, or 40G speeds, while Python API is suitable for boosting automation capacities.

NetScanTools Pro network testing software includes the Packet Generator and Packet Flooder tools. Packet Generator is a decent tool allowing you to create a UDP, TCP, CDP, ICMP, ARP/RARP, or RAW packet and send either a single packet or multiple packets to an IPv4 address. This tool was designed primarily as a packet generating and crafting utility. If you want to flood a network with packets and traffic as a means of stress testing it, then you’ll want to combine Packet Generator with the Packet Flooder tool. Alone, Packet Generator cannot create high-speed traffic and won’t respond to returning packets. A combination of the two, however, could make for a comprehensive tool.

With Packet Generator, you’re afforded complete control over headers, including the destination of MAC addresses, the source of Ethernet traffic, and IP, TCP, UDP, and ICMP header fields. This program is great for sending multiple types of packets in quick succession by utilizing scripting processes, and for playing back a packet capture file saved in the past.

Traffic Meter Mac

One feature I like about Packet Generator is the fact that packet transmissions are scripted. Scripting is simple, and the feature means the parameters of your packets can be changed according to edited script. I also like the mode dedicated to RAW packets. Basically, this mode lets you define the packet by using the NetScanTools hex editor. RAW packet length is limited by the maximum transmission unit of your network (usually 1460 bytes).

Unfortunately, Packet Generator doesn’t have the capability to send customized packets via WAN interfaces such as modems. It can only send via wired Ethernet or wireless 802.11x interfaces. Packet Flooder, meanwhile, is primarily a UDP network traffic generator. It’s able to send packets to IPv4 and IPv6 addresses at a relatively high speed, achieving as much as 98% bandwidth usage under certain circumstances. The major drawback to this tool is it cannot send packet types other than UDP.

With the NetScanTools Packet Flooder tool, you can fix the target UDP port, or make it entirely random. This is useful for certain tests. Data payloads can also be customized, with adaptable length and content; payload content can include random characters, repeated characters of the alphabet, file data, or text data. This feature is available on any interface Windows can send UDP packets through.

Unlike Packet Generator, Packet Flooder does not use WinPcap or Npcap. This means there aren’t any limitations as to which devices are compatible. Rather, the interface is determined by the operating system, according to the IPv4 or IPv6 routing table contents. It’s worth noting, the bandwidth utilization achieved with this tool depends on data reports generated by the operating system. Reports take the form of a historical chart or a gauge—two dynamic and easy-to-read methods for displaying data.

If you want to try the NetScanTools Packet Generator and Packet Flooder, check out the NetScanTools Pro demo version, which is free for 30 days. Bear in mind this isn’t the full version, and the demo version cannot be converted to the full version simply by unlocking it.

TRex is another open source program, though this one isn’t free. Still, it’s a good value, and it boasts a flexible offering. TRex incorporates both stateful feature sets and stateless feature sets. The stateful feature sets include support for DPDK ½.5/5/10/25/40/50/100Gbps interfaces, a high scale of traffic (up to 200-400GB per second), latency measurements, jitter measurements, checks for flow ordering, and NAT/PAT translation learning.

The stateless feature sets include the ability to craft stateless streams of traffic up to a scale of 20 million packets per second, along with support for numerous streams; the capacity to alter any field within the packet; continuous support, burst support, multi-use support, multi-burst support, console support, and GUI support; per-stream statistics for latency and jitter; and Python API for boosted automation.

This is a good tool for benchmarking and stress testing NAT, firewall, IPS, load balancer, and network cache devices, offering unlimited concurrent flows. The main issue with TRex is it doesn’t offer support for routing emulation plugins, like BGP, ISIS, and RIP.

Top-Ranking Network Traffic Generator

When looking for a tool to generate or simulate network traffic, you’ll encounter a wide variety of options. After reading this guide, you should have a sense of the available tools and which might be best suited to your needs. Some are free and more limited in scope, while others are part of comprehensive toolsets. When available, take advantage of the free versions of the premium software.

SolarWinds Engineer’s Toolset, specifically WAN Killer, is my favorite network traffic generator on the market. Alongside the traffic generator element itself, the overall offering included in the wider toolset is unbeatable. With more than 60 tools working together with remarkable success rates, ETS offers great value, intelligent features, and a user-friendly design, and it’s available as a free trial.

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