Question : Ways to stress test a network

I have a 24port cisco switch, that contains a linux fedora core 4 file/ftp/webserver and has 4-5 workstations
running linux workstation and windows xp in the LAN.. not connected to the internet..

how do i stress test the network.

Answer : Ways to stress test a network

Hi jedistar,
When someone wants to "stress test" a network like this, they are often looking to see what the performance of the server is.  An automated test would be best, but you could do a "gorilla" test - get together five people who would each work one workstation, calling up web pages and doing file transfers as fast as they can.  But doing the test is only part of the issue - you want to get useful information out of the test.  As a "poor man's" test, you could run the "top" utility on the server, to see what kind of cpu utilization you achieve.  And, you can use the counters on the Cisco switch to get a rough idea of the switch's performance in terms of bytes per second or packets per second.

HTH
CB