Testing Network Transfer Speed Between unRAID and macOS

This post is a follow up to the previous post about creating RAM disks on unRAID and macOS in order to test network transfer speeds. I actually used this method first, as it was the easier of the two and gave me exact transfer rates. The key is to use iPerf3.

Installing iPerf3 on unRAID

Installing iPerf3 on unRAID is a snap using the excellent Nerd Pack plugin. Assuming you have the Community Apps (CA) plugin installed, navigate to the Apps tab and search for “nerd”. Click on the resulting Nerd Pack link in the drop down to install the plugin.

Once installed, click on the gear icon (settings) for Nerd Pack. You will be presented with a long list of packages that can be installed. Scan down until you find:

iperf-3.1.6-x86_64-1cf.txz

the latest version when this post was written. Just click the slider on the far right to ON and the package will be installed.

Running iPerf3 in Server Mode on unRAID

Click the Terminal icon >_ in the upper righthand corner of the unRAID window, right below the Uptime display. In the Terminal window that pops up, type the following command:

iperf3 -s

You will see the following server response letting you know it’s listening:

------------------------------------------------
Server listening on 5201
------------------------------------------------

Installing iPerf3 on macOS

The easiest way to install iPerf3 on macOS is to use Homebrew. If you don’t have Homebrew installed, click the Homebrew link in the previous sentence and it will take you to the install instructions. Once Homebrew is installed, installing iPerf3 is as easy as typing the following command in a Terminal window:

brew install iPerf3

Running iPerf3 in Client Mode on macOS

Now that iPerf3 is installed, just type the following command to test your network speed:

iperf3 -c xx:xx:xx:xx

where xx:xx:xx:xx is the IP address of your unRAID server (or more specifically, depending on your setup, the IP address of the 10 GB NIC in your unRAID server). After issuing that command, Terminal will print out (something similar to) the following (in both the client and server terminal windows):

[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bitrate
[  5]   0.00-1.00   sec  1.09 GBytes  9.35 Gbits/sec
[  5]   1.00-2.00   sec  1.08 GBytes  9.30 Gbits/sec
[  5]   2.00-3.00   sec  1.09 GBytes  9.40 Gbits/sec
[  5]   3.00-4.00   sec  1.09 GBytes  9.37 Gbits/sec
[  5]   4.00-5.00   sec  1020 MBytes  8.56 Gbits/sec
[  5]   5.00-6.00   sec  1.04 GBytes  8.94 Gbits/sec
[  5]   6.00-7.00   sec  1.09 GBytes  9.38 Gbits/sec
[  5]   7.00-8.00   sec  1.09 GBytes  9.35 Gbits/sec
[  5]   8.00-9.00   sec  1.09 GBytes  9.40 Gbits/sec
[  5]   9.00-10.00  sec  1.07 GBytes  9.20 Gbits/sec
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bitrate
[  5]   0.00-10.00  sec  10.7 GBytes  9.23 Gbits/sec                  sender
[  5]   0.00-10.00  sec  10.7 GBytes  9.23 Gbits/sec                  receiver

Congratulations, you are now riding the light at 10 Gig speeds!