iperf2

Intel® Ethernet 800 Series

Linux Performance Tuning Guide

ID	Date	Version	Classification
636781	07/19/2025		Public

Intel recommends iperf2 over iperf3 for most benchmarking situations due to the ease of use and support of multiple threads in a single application instance. Intel recommends running with the -P option with 2-4 threads for 25G connections and around 6-8 threads for 100G connections.

To run uni-directional traffic from client to server:
Server command example:
iperf2 -s
Client command example:
iperf2 -c <serverIP> -P 12

To run bi-directional traffic from client to server (and vice versa):
Server command example:
iperf2 -s -D -p <port>
Client command example:
iperf2 -c <serverIP> -p <port> -P <threads> --full-duplex &
or
iperf2 -c <serverIP> -p <port> -P <threads> -d &

Note:Both the --full-duplex and -d options in iperf2 allow you to perform bidirectional testing. However, the --full-duplex option specifically focuses on full duplex testing. Note:When running the network throughput test with a single stream/thread (example: -P 1), AMD processors may not provide expected throughput, particularly with higher bandwidth NICs (if speed is >=25G bandwidth). As a result, application pinning to specific cores is required to achieve higher throughput. See Section 7.2, "Application Settings".

Intel® Ethernet 800 Series

Linux Performance Tuning Guide

​iperf2

iperf2