Looking for a network testing and benchmarking device

Hardware Questions and Recommendations
1

Hi, I am looking for a network testing benchmarking device with OpenWRT, does anyone have an experience with a device that is capable of doing 500mbps+ TCP traffic via iperf3 ? Could you recommend me something compact (i.e. some home router or another compact platform, no PC, tablet or notebook :slight_smile: with enough horsepower for iperf, tcpdump, etc.? Thank you for any ideas.

2

MacMini, ODROID H2

Oops, you said it runs OpenWrt. Drop the MacMini then.

Seriously, to test at 500 Mbps you need a device that can effortlessly generate, sink, and monitor multiple flows at that rate. It is exceptionally unlikely you’ll find that with SoCs designed to route and switch. You’re in the realm multi-core, mid- or upper-range x86_64/AMD64 or similar. I’d also recommend a server distro (Edit: For clarity, a server distro not for the networking, but for the tooling such as build systems and language support, X, tooling that hasn't been ported to OpenWrt (Wireshark, for example), and the like)

3

OK, thank you for good ideas... Does anyone know if there are other similar (powerful enough) and compact devices on the market? PC/ADM64 is OK. On-board NICs with some hw offload capabilites would be nice too. It would not be bad, if the system could be powered by PoE :-)...

Thank you for any other tips.