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Wireless / Networking

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Wireless / Networking

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Accurate gauges of performance, or a waste of time and bandwidth?
Windows Performance Monitor A lesser-known but useful network performance tool in Windows (2000 and NT) is the Performance Monitor. Accessible from the Control Panel (Administrative Tools) or the command-line name `perfmon`, the Performance Monitor provides more detailed and dynamic, near real-time network statistics. (See below)

More of this Feature

• Part 2: Toast.net Evaluation

Join the Discussion

"Does anyone have suggestions for some free or cheap software tools/utilities for testing throughput and bandwidth from the desktop to the server in a LAN?"
-MAESTROG

Related Resources

• Introduction to Bandwidth and Latency
• Bandwidth/Speed Tweaks

Perfmon presents statistics in the form of counters and counter groups. Windows maintains several dozen counter groups including several related specifically to networking:

IP
Network Interface
Remote Access Service (RAS)
TCP
UDP
ICMP

Windows Performance Monitor

Network groups contain counters such as the following:

datagrams, segments, packets, or bytes sent and/or received
number of active/established/passive/reset connections
error/failure counts

Compared to Dial-Up Networking, where statistics are displayed and updated automatically, Perfmon displays no data automatically and requires a fair amount of configuration time and effort to extract data in the form of stripcharts.

Windows Performance Monitor Chart