One of the many useful tools included with Arista EOS is iperf(2.0.5) which allows the switch to generate test TCP or UDP traffic. Something to note is that the total generated traffic is limited by the both the CPU capacity and the link between the CPU and the forwarding hardware, so do not expect this to be capable of linerate testing. This is useful for functional testing only.
For the client side, just drop to the bash shell, and point it towards the iperf server
L1#bash Arista Networks EOS shell [admin@L1 ~]$ iperf Usage: iperf [-s|-c host] [options] Try `iperf --help' for more information. [admin@L1 ~]$ iperf -c 172.16.0.4 ------------------------------------------------------------ Client connecting to 172.16.0.4, TCP port 5001 TCP window size: 22.5 KByte (default) ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 3] local 172.16.12.1 port 51455 connected with 172.16.0.4 port 5001 [ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth [ 3] 0.0-28.6 sec 384 KBytes 110 Kbits/sec
Running the IPerf server (traffic is from client to server) on the switch requires a little more work. By default iperf uses the port TCP/5001 in server mode for inbound connections. But Arista blocks this port by default as part of the Control Plane Policer. Therefore you have to temporarily add an iptables rule in the EOS shell to allow access to port TCP/5001.
[admin@L1 ~]$ sudo iptables -I INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 5001 -j ACCEPT
This can later be undone by
[admin@L1 ~]$ sudo iptables -D INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 5001 -j ACCEPT
Once you have the port open, start iperf in server mode and you will see reports of the incoming connections.
[admin@L2 ~]$ iperf -s -i 5 ------------------------------------------------------------ Server listening on TCP port 5001 TCP window size: 85.3 KByte (default) ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 4] local 172.16.0.4 port 5001 connected with 172.16.12.1 port 51455 [ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth [ 4] 0.0- 5.0 sec 55.1 KBytes 90.4 Kbits/sec [ 4] 5.0-10.0 sec 59.4 KBytes 97.3 Kbits/sec [ 4] 10.0-15.0 sec 58.0 KBytes 95.0 Kbits/sec [ 4] 15.0-20.0 sec 67.9 KBytes 111 Kbits/sec [ 4] 20.0-25.0 sec 65.0 KBytes 107 Kbits/sec [ 4] 25.0-30.0 sec 18.4 KBytes 30.1 Kbits/sec [ 4] 0.0-31.7 sec 384 KBytes 99.3 Kbits/sec
Note that these results are in a virtualized, simulated environment. The amount of traffic that a real switch can generate is much higher.
