Are people interested in multi-client stress tests on routers?

Technology@lemmy.world – 32 points – 1 years ago

I asked this same question on Reddit and I got zero engagement, so perhaps Lemmy has people that care more about their hardware.

I recently decided to use some of the tools provided by Mr Salter (netburn) and I have to ask the community if you want to see multi-client stress tests (4K streaming, VoIP, web browsing) used on a wireless router or if the single-client iperf tests are good enough. Bear in mind that pretty much all publications that still test their devices (most don't) rely on the single-client test method.

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Can your ISP? If so, yes. Because ~25 Mbps * 4 is not a lot of data. And the NAT for four clients mapped to the same firewall/router is pretty trivial. And no, adding “browsing” is not going to be an issue.

On paper, it is not a lot of data, but then adding more clients requesting 25Mbps continuously and then adding some spontaneous, but intensive web browsing can lead to latency spikes. And the user no longer gets a good streaming/browsing experience. I've even seen it on an expensive (by consumer-based networking standard) router such as the GT-AX6000.

So what matters is the amount of packets per second that can be processed which these speed tests already cover (albeit, somewhat obfuscated because most people don’t understand the network layers.

I am just trying to better understand this stuff, so I have to ask if seeing how long it takes for a client device to accomplish a certain task wouldn't be better than just glancing over the average Mbps in a graph? That's what most publications are showing.

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