What is network stress testing?
GitHub - hellgrenj/hulken: Hulken is a stress testing tool for everything speaking HTTP. Hulken supports multiple urls, GETs and POSTs, static and dynamic payloads, multiple agents and more. Hulken is highly configurable but defaults to some reasonable settings. Hulken works both as a library and a stand-alone command line tool. Stress testing is a risk management tool that involves analyzing the impacts of the extreme scenarios that are unlikely but feasible. The main question for financial institutions is whether they have adequate capital and liquid assets to survive stressful times. Geekbench is a popular benchmarking tool that stress tests your CPU and offers single-core and multi-core scores for you to comprehensively judge your computer’s ability. Wsst WebSockets Stress Test - Tool written in NodeJS that allows to make a stress test for your application that uses WebSockets. You can create behavior scenarios that tool will run on every connection in test. Stress Test GPU with These Tools and Check Stability. So those were our 5 picks for the best GPU stress testing software. Almost all the tools mentioned in this list are safe to use so don’t worry about damaging your GPU. However, be slightly cautious while using FurMark as it can drive the GPU nuts if not configured properly.
Network stress testing is the practice of putting your network under a heavy load to discover breaking points and areas for improvement.
By using network testing tools, you can determine the limits of your hardware, and help get an understanding of how much traffic you can take on before you need to expand your resources.
Here is our list of the best network stress testing tools for 2020:
- SolarWinds WAN Killer Traffic Generator(FREE TRIAL) – An easy to use and feature-rich toolkit ideal for stress testing the networks of medium to large-sized businesses.
- Nping – Free open-source command-line tool for packet crafting and network testing.
- Packet Sender – Free network stress tester with a graphical interface.
- Ostinato – Provides API integrations, support, and reporting.
- NetScanTools Pro – A bundle of tools that includes a Packet Generator and Packet Flooder to perform stress tests.
Why is network stress testing important?
Network stress testing is important when planning network expansions, as well as when looking to upgrade equipment such as switches and firewalls.
Knowing exactly what your network can and cannot handle will keep you prepared for growth, and help avoid any outages based on hardware limitations. In addition to growth, there are a few other reasons why a business or sysadmin would want to stress test their network.
If you’re an MSP, or service provider that guarantees a certain SLA, you’re going to want to ensure that your network can not only keep your business running but keep your client’s services running as well. Network stress testing can help find unconventional ways end-users could accidentally overload the network and cause service outages that directly impact productivity.
Stress tests can also help identify weaknesses that an attacker could use to overwhelm your infrastructure. DDOS attacks have evolved in complexity over the years, so testing the limits of your network both internally and externally can give you an idea of what it would take to bring down your network.
On the flip side, not all floods of traffic are malicious. In the age of viral content, a successful marketing campaign could drive massive amounts of traffic to a website or service. Not having a plan for these types of events could lose new customers or bring down services that existing customers use in the process.
What causes network stress for businesses?
Network stress can be caused by several factors and can be divided into two segments: internal and external.
Internally on the LAN, most causes of network stress are found to be caused by unregulated traffic taking up too much bandwidth. A great example of this that you may have experienced yourself is when multiple people are streaming Netflix or Hulu and everything grinds to a halt. This can also happen if too many people are moving large files across the intranet or parts of your LAN.
From externally on the WAN, malicious traffic can attempt to overload services that may impact outward-facing products your customers use such as websites and online tools. Attacks could be thwarted with a simple CAPTCHA, but sometimes it’s not that simple. Attackers can create malformed packets and send them to your exposed ports at incredible volumes. Being able to not just stop, but withstand this type of attack is critical for any business that relies on the internet.
How do I fix network stress?
So what can be done to regain control of your network? It all starts with the Quality Of Service (QoS). QoS is available in nearly all-business-class firewalls and routers and allows you to set limits on how much resources a specific source of traffic can use.
Say you’d still like to allow employees to listen to music at work, but don’t want the network getting overloaded by music streaming packets. You can set the QoS to limit music streaming services so that it doesn’t interfere with day to day operations. Ideally, it’s a win-win for everyone. QoS allows you to get as granular as you’d like. You can even set rules based on individual ports and set exclusions based on certain IP addresses.
Of course, all of this would be in vain if you had a legitimate physical bottleneck in your network, like old wiring or a failing switch that brought down your speeds. That’s when running a thorough network stress test can help you map out what parts of your network need improving, and just how much traffic it can take.
How to stress test a network
Stress testing a network can be as simple as sending packets to a machine, or as complex as running an automated tool to report back it’s findings. On a very simple scale running a ping check across your network can give you an idea if a device is dropping packets or experiencing high latency.
For instance, if you know a device is behind a specific firewall or switch, you can ping another device that isn’t behind that switch to help get a better idea of where the bottleneck is coming from. The downside of this is that it’s tedious, and doesn’t provide much insight into what is causing the problem.
Alternatively, you can move a 1GB file across the LAN to another workstation, VLAN or server, and measure the speed. The file size doesn’t have to be 1GB but should be large enough to take some time. This will give you a rough idea of what the speeds are on your LAN to that destination.
A proper network test would involve a bit more detail. With network stress testing tools you can craft specific packets of any size, and control the exact amount of times a device is sent traffic. This level of customization gives you better flexibility.
Most sysadmins will agree that having a proper network stress testing tool saves tons of time, and is a valuable part of their everyday toolkit.
The best network stress testing tools
1. SolarWinds WAN Killer Traffic Generator (FREE TRIAL)
WAN Killer Traffic Generator is one of the many tools you can find in the SolarWinds Engineer’s Toolkit. This tool enables you to go beyond basic stress testing by creating specific packets tailored to your specified protocols inside of any Windows environment.
This opens up near-limitless possibilities when it comes to testing how your servers, applications, and overall network will behave under certain conditions. Through the traffic dashboard, you can control the size, protocol, and destination of your traffic before sending it. This allows you to simulate certain applications, or how your end users are likely to behave in a real-life scenario.
While most network stress testing tools simply blast out traffic, WAN Killer gives you the option to customize traffic patterns to replicate human behavior and set random intervals. This method of testing gives you a more realistic set of data to analyze, and better reflect a live environment.
The true value in WAN Killer comes from its ability to mimic your network over time. As you configure WAN Killer you can create traffic patterns that reflect how your network usually functions. As you test new applications you can use this traffic flow as a baseline to better understand how your live environment will react to bandwidth changes and limited network access.
Lastly, WAN Killer gives you tools to measure SLA levels as well as using performance metrics to ensure that not just speeds are met, but that productivity isn’t impacted as well.
You can test out WAN Killer as well as the other 60+ tools in the Engineer’s Toolkit completely free for 30 days.
2. Nping
Nping is an open-source tool used to test response times while targets on a network are under heavy traffic loads. Through a simple command-line interface you can craft packets and set their destination for a wide variety of load balancing and stress testing purposes.
Users of Nping will have full control over every aspect of the traffic sent. Configurations such as custom header, protocol type, size, and speed can all be set up through the terminal interface. Just like WAN Killer, you can specify a target for either multiple hosts or even multiple ports.
In addition to network stress testing, this utility can also prove useful in different security checks as well. Simulate and test for ARP poisoning vulnerabilities by crafting fake ARP messages over your network, or recreate common Distributed Denial Of Service (DDoS) attacks to see how your network holds up.
Nping also comes with an echo mode that gives you a first-hand look at how traffic is changed or manipulated in real-time as it moves through the network. This is an important feature to have, especially if you utilize network address translation across your firewalls or suspect traffic might be getting manipulated.
While Nping is a powerful tool, it does lack official support which is critical for business environments that rely on high up times. There is also no graphical interface for Nping, which could be considered a downside to some sysadmins.
Nping is completely free and available for Windows, Linux, or macOS.
3. Packet Sender
Pack Sender is an open-source packet traffic generator that was developed for testing how networked devices react to specific traffic.
Similar to Nping, Packet Sender can issue multiple types of traffic to any given device, or port on your network and comes with both a command-line interface as well as a GUI. All data can be defined as either ASCII or HEX and this data can be shared either through the Packet Sender Cloud or through an exported report.
While Packet Sender may look simple, it’s still a powerful and free tool that you can use to stress-test your network. Packet Sender is available for Windows, Linux, and macOS.
4. Ostinato
Ostinato is a paid packet sending tool that can be used to stress test devices on your network. Ostinato has a simple and easy to use interface that gives you an overview of your current traffic speeds, volume, port, and device.
On the backend, Ostinato comes with a full API library to allow for integrations into your custom tools or plugins. Traffic tests can be configured to fire randomly, in a pattern, or in a constant stream.
You can set up Ostinato to record data and provide simple reporting on the overall performance or the test, or on how an individual target handled specific traffic. Pricing for Ostinato starts at $19.00 (£14.75) and is available for Windows, Linux, and macOS.
5. NetScanTools Pro
Last but not least is NetScanTools Pro, which contains a bundle of network testing tools that include a Packet Generator, as well as a Packet Flooder.
With Packet Generator, you can craft any type of packets you’d like and send them across your network. You’ll have the full ability to specify how those packets are built, as well as replay captured packets that come across your network. Packets can either be imported from a WinPcap file or captured live on the network in real-time.
The NetScanTools bundle runs on modern Windows environments, is available for testing through a 30-day demo, and starts at $249 (£193.18) per license.
Conclusion
We’ve determined that network stress testing is an important part of keeping your environment running smoothly, as well as planning for expansions. So which network stress testing software is right for you?
If you’re managing a medium to large-sized company SolarWinds WAN Killer will give you the best mix of features, ease of use, and support. The ability to craft customized stress tests and produce data-rich reports so conveniently puts WAN Killer at the top of our list.
For departments on a budget or home hobbyist networks, Pack Sender is a great free software that will provide plenty of packet crafting and traffic flooding features you’d need to test your environment. The main downside to these free tools is that if you run into a problem, you’re on your own when looking for support.
Do you stress test your network? Do you think it’s an important part of network testing? Let us know in the comments below.
If you have built a new PC, stress testing the CPU is the first thing you should do. It helps you find the faulty hardware and allows you to test your machine’s capability before throwing it into a mix of intensive tasks. Many people call it a torture test, and rightly so, given that it really pushes every hardware component to its absolute limit. If you are new to this world, well, I have brought a comprehensive list of tools to stress test CPU. Apart from that, I have also shared some benchmarking tools in case you just want to compare your PC’s performance with other computers. So without further ado, let’s go through the article and learn about the CPU stress test in detail.
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Software to Stress Test CPU
In this article, we have included 5 stress test tools and 5 benchmarking programs. If you are well aware of computer hardware then you can stress test your CPU by overclocking and generating heavy loads on the components. However, in case you just want to check your computer’s performance and how it ranks up with other similar devices then go with the benchmarking tools mentioned in the second section. Now having said that, let’s get started.
1. OCCT
OCCT is one of the best tools for stress testing CPU and various hardware components. It’s designed especially for professionals, but you can also use it if you have an in-depth understanding of PC components. OCCT allows you to run several heavy tests on your CPU making sure all the cores are being used to their full capacity. Besides that, it also detects hardware glitches if a component is not performing on expected lines. The best part about OCCT is that you also get a monitoring engine that displays the temperature of your CPU, voltages, fan speed, frequencies and more. The data is accompanied by lucid graphs so you can comprehend the nitty-gritty easily. All in all, if you are looking to stress test your CPU for checking hardware errors then OCCT is a one-stop solution for you. More so, if you are using it on your personal computer then the program is completely free.
Check Out OCCT (Free for personal use, Starts at $1 per month)
2. Prime95
Prime95 is another great software for stress testing CPU under an extreme workload. In fact, many professionals rely on Prime95 because of its holistic approach to testing hardware components. If you are a system builder or one of those people who love to overclock CPU then Prime95 will let you test the stability of your machine flawlessly. To talk about its approach, Prime95 heavily tests the CPU using the processor’s integer and floating-point instructions. It supplies a consistent workload to the CPU and exceeds the limit once the machine gains some stability. Having said that, the best part about Prime95 is that it’s completely free and available on all major platforms including macOS and Linux. So, if you want to test the limit of your CPU to the point it tortures every component of your CPU, well, Prime95 is the tool you should go for.
Check Out Prime95 (Free)
3. AIDA64 Extreme
AIDA64 Extreme is more of a hardware information program than a stress test tool. However, it does come with a hardware detection engine that offers plenty of heavy load tests and diagnostic functions. For starters, you can overclock your CPU and run intensive workloads to stress test the components. It deploys a 64-bit multi-threaded testing module to push your computers to its extreme limit. At the same time, you can accurately check voltage, power consumption by different components, fan speed readings, and other parameters. Besides that, it also lets you compare to other CPUs to gauge your PC performance using its online database. As I said, AIDA64 Extreme is more focussed on providing information and that’s why it’s a great stress testing tool for general consumers. You can definitely take a look at AIDA64 Extreme if OCCT and Prime95 are too complex for you.
Check Out AIDA64 Extreme (30-days free trial, $39.95 for 3 PCs)
4. HeavyLoad
HeavyLoad is one of the most popular tools for stress testing CPU on Windows machines. It’s a light application that is not as technically complex as OCCT and the suchlike, but it surely offers extreme tests with a limited set of features. It uses simulated tasks to put the CPU under heavy stress and test its reliability. You can also choose your own tasks, allocate limited memory, select specific cores to find how your machine reacts under different scenarios. Apart from that, you can also restrict the disk space and write speed to check how your PC behaves when the hard disk reaches its limit. And for ease of understanding the performance metrics, it offers a simple graph of CPU usage on the dashboard. So, if you are looking for a simple software for stress testing CPU then HeavyLoad can be a great pick.
Check Out HeavyLoad (Free)
5. Stress Tool for Linux
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If you are a Linux user and want to stress test your CPU then you don’t have to rely on third-party programs. Most of the Linux-based distributions including Debian and Mint support this tool and can be installed within seconds. Just open the Terminal and hit this command to install the Stress tool: $ sudo apt-get install stress. You can now stress test your CPU and also define various parameters such as timeout time, CPU frequency, cache thrashing and more. If you want to learn more about the arguments and parameters then you can head over to this explainer.
Tools Reviewers Use to Stress Test CPU
Here, we will list 5 programs that reviewers use for gauging the performance of most computers. However, keep in mind, these are mostly benchmarking programs rather than a true CPU stress testing tool. It allows you to perform extensive tasks and put a massive workload on the CPU to measure your computer’s performance. You can further compare your PC score with other machines to find where your PC build ranks. Now having said that, let’s begin.
6. PCMark 10
PCMark 10 is the most powerful benchmarking tool which offers plenty of workload and simulated tests. It runs a number of performance tests that reflect the use case of professionals and average users combined. The best part about PCMark 10 is that unlike OCCT and other similar programs, here you don’t have to configure anything. All you have to do is install the program and click a button to run a multitude of stress tests on CPU. The tests are designed in such a way that it uses all the cores of the CPU and brings the best performance out of the given hardware. Further, you can find your comprehensive score and compare it with other computers. Simply put, if you don’t have much expertise on CPU and hardware components then PCMark 10 can help you gauge your computer’s performance easily.
Check Out PCMark 10 (Free for Basic Edition, $29.99 for Advanced Edition)
7. PassMark Performance Test
PassMark offers a performance test application for benchmarking PCs with a standard PassMark rating. It uses a series of CPU stress tests including hyper-threading, complex mathematical calculations, 3D simulation, encryption, and physics modeling. These are some intensive tasks that require massive resources and bring the CPU cores to its knees. PassMark claims that it accurately quantifies the PC hardware and you can compare it with other similar devices from its database. Along with that, it also offers some hardware upgrade recommendations which can significantly improve your performance for cheap. So, if you want to check where your PC stands among the legion of computers, PassMark can be a great alternative to PCMark 10.
Check Out PassMark (Free Trial for 30-days, One-time purchase of $29)
8. Geekbench
Geekbench is a popular benchmarking tool that stress tests your CPU and offers single-core and multi-core scores for you to comprehensively judge your computer’s ability. It simulates multiple intensive tasks that we use in our daily life with a dose of Augmented reality applications and Machine Learning operations to find your CPU’s peak performance. AR and ML are the latest additions to Geekbench 5 to test how future-proof your device really is. Other than that, it also tests the CPU by heavy gaming, image processing, and video editing of higher-resolution footage. All these tasks push the CPU to its absolute brink and that’s where the Geekbench score is determined. So, if you want a comprehensive score for your CPU which can be compared to other devices– no matter if it’s running Windows, macOS or Linux then Geekbench is a solid choice bar none.
Check Out Geekbench (Free, Starts at $9.99)
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9. Novabench
Novabench is a relatively new program for stress testing CPU, but it comes with some great features that can be helpful to the general users. Apart from benchmarking your CPU, it also detects glitches– both hardware and software and allows you to resolve them instantly. Similar to PassMark, it recommends some hardware changes based on their performance in the stress test. As for the simulated tests, Novabench deploys hyper-threading and OpenCL compute test. OpenCL is a standard test among Windows computers and quite reliable to gauge the performance of the PC. So, if you want to try out some new workloads on your CPU, Novabench can be a good alternative.
Check Out Novabench (Free for personal use, Starts at $19)
10. UserBenchmark
If you are a gamer and want to test your build then UserBenchmark is the perfect tool to measure the peak performance. It calculates a score based on the effective speed by performing intensive desktop tasks like high-resolution video rendering, image processing and more. Further, UserBenchmark uses massive cryptographic operations to push the CPU to use all its cores. It also has a hyper-threaded series of tasks that continuously keep the cores involved to get the highest benchmark score. Simply put, UserBenchmark is a reliable program to stress test your CPU and you should definitely go for it given that it’s completely free.
Check Out UserBenchmark (Free)
SEE ALSO: 10 Best Thermal Pastes for CPU You Can Buy
Stress Test Your CPU and Find the Peak Performance
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So those were our picks for the 10 best software programs to stress test CPU. We have included some professional-grade tools which can torture your PC to no end. And then there are some software programs which allow you to run a series of intensive tasks and offer a benchmark result so you can compare your PC with other computers. Depending on your expertise level, you can choose either method and perform heavy tasks to find the peak performance. Anyway, that is all from us. If you liked our article, do comment down below and let us know your opinion on this subject.