Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Iperf
Iperf is an application that is included with Raspbian. It is a common tool for system
administrators for testing a network by creating TCP and UDP streams. Iperf has a
client and server functionality, so it requires another computer known as the server.
This can be another Pi or another computer that has Iperf installed on it.
This application will push the boundaries of your network interface and architecture.
One of the more advanced features of Iperf is to detect packet loss along a complex
network, like the Internet. If you have a virtual machine on the Internet, try installing
iperf on it and compare the results of your local network against the Internet. Let's
install Iperf on Pi and the remote computer.
sudo apt-get install iperf
The server which will be listening for connections type, you will type:
iperf -s
The client will show you all the statistics relating to the tests that are carried out.
iperf -c <ip address of server or domain name of public server>
Recommended bandwidth
A basic bandwidth of 256 KBps of both upstream and downstream is recommended
for low use hosting of any kind. You can get away with 64 KBps for personal use,
say, using a basic website or transferring text data like JSON.
It is standard practice for home ISP providers to supply you with a much larger
downstream bandwidth than an upstream one. This is one of the main differences
between home and business packages. It is the upstream bandwidth that matters
when trying to serve content to users on the Internet.
If you plan on using VoIP with Asterisk, a small upstream might cause terrible
delays and jitter. But Asterisk comes licensed with GSM codecs that should work
with upstream bandwidth of 64 KBps for a single call. You may purchase closed
source codecs that work on much slower connections at the cost of voice quality.
