HRPing is a great bi-directional traffic generation program. It uses standard ping packets to generate bytes at almost any bit rate, and reports the round trip time of each packet, along with a simple visual representation of any lost packets. It's great for quickly determining the maximum bandwidth a link can handle, or generating a certain amount of traffic reliably.
Here's an example of how to use it:
HRPing Example Usage
Example bit rates and settings required to achieve these bit rates
------------------------------------------------------------------
bit/s Interval (ms) Size (bytes)
-s -L
50M 1 8000
20M 3 8000
10M 1 1300
2M 5 1300
1M 10 1300
512K 20 1300
256K 40 1300
128K 79 1300
64K 159 1300
32K 317 1300
16K 635 1300
9600 1083 1300
4800 2167 1300
3600 2889 1300
2400 4333 1300
1200 187 28
600 373 28
300 747 28
150 1493 28
75 2987 28
DiffServ (DSCP) values and their HRPing settings
------------------------------------------------
Name DSCP DSCP IP TOS HRPing TOS
(Decimal) (Bits) Field -v
Default 0 000 000 000 000 00 0
EF 46 101 110 101 110 00 184
AF11 10 001 010 001 010 00 40
AF12 12 001 100 001 100 00 48
AF13 14 001 110 001 110 00 56
AF21 18 010 010 010 010 00 72
AF22 20 010 100 010 100 00 80
AF23 22 010 110 010 110 00 88
AF31 26 011 010 011 010 00 104
AF32 28 011 100 011 100 00 112
AF33 30 011 110 011 110 00 120
AF41 34 100 010 100 010 00 136
AF42 36 100 100 100 100 00 144
AF43 38 100 110 100 110 00 152
CS1 8 001 000 001 000 00 32
CS2 16 010 000 010 000 00 64
CS3 24 011 000 011 000 00 96
CS4 32 100 000 100 000 00 128
CS5 40 101 000 101 000 00 160
CS6 48 110 000 110 000 00 192
CS7 56 111 000 111 000 00 224
Other common switches
---------------------
-t Send packets until stopped (CTRL-C or CTRL-BREAK)
-w time Wait this many milliseconds until packet deemed lost
Example
-------
Ping Alpha continuously with approximately 128 Kbit/s data using AF13 tagged data, assuming a round-trip delay of 500 ms:
hrping -s 79 -L 1300 -w 500 -t -v 56 alpha(name or ip address)
See the attached for the tool.