Switch stress testing

[mhostbaek]

I have a switch (3548XL), I have been told that after a couple of hours online with heavy traffic the switch reboots. I'd like to reproduce this problem, but since it is only me connected to the switch it is kinda hard to do heavy traffic.

Is there a way of doing some stress testing ? I have three computers connected to the switch, all of which are running BSD-UNIX - maybe some software exists that'll send off lots of packets ?

Thanks.

/mich

[bbranch]

There are several free utilities for generating traffic, I use TTCP (or a variant of TTCP), if you set it to UDP instead of the default TCP and set the number of packets sent to a high number (pcattcp -t -s -u -n10000000 1.1.1.1) you should be able to generate close to 100Mb from each of your servers:

http://www.pcausa.com/Utilities/pcattcp.htm

[mhostbaek]

Thanks.

I installed a TTCP variant, and launced the command you suggested. I can see that it is working - which brings my to my second question : "Which IOS command should I use to see how much traffic is going through on each interface ?

Thanks again !

/mich

[bbranch]

If you do a SHOW INT or a SHOW VLAN (depending on how you have configured the switch) and look for the 5 minute input and output rates, this will give you the throughput in bps:

sh int fast 0/1

FastEthernet0/1 is up, line protocol is up

.

.

.

5 minute input rate 10118000 bits/sec, 40 packets/sec

5 minute output rate 8017000 bits/sec, 359 packets/sec

.

.

this example shows a data rate of 10.1Mb in and 8.0Mb out

[mhostbaek]

OK - got that, thanks.

How about a total status of the switch, so I could see how much of its resources is currently at use.. ?

Thanks.

/mich

[ten]

issue a "show proc cpu" and the first couple of lines will tell you how busy the processor itself is.

I would recommend you run the command on an idle switch first to give yourself a starting point.

The CPU on an idle 3548 can run anywhere between 30-70%