[K12OSN] Testing actual network speeds

[Carl Keil]

Hi Folks,

Can anyone suggest a way to test my LAN speeds that I'm using for 
K12LTSP?  Screen redraws are jerky and slow on some of my clients.  I've 
always suspected my network cabling wasn't quite right, but I don't know 
how to test it.  When I request things from the web server on the 
network and other network activities where I can "get a reading" of the 
transfer speed it's usually about 30Mb/s.  Which seems a little on the 
low side.  But that's not even my K12LTSP network, I don't know how to 
test the speed between server and client.  Clearly it's working at 
100BaseT, but it seems like there's got to be a bottleneck somewhere.  
I'm using a consumer grade 1000BaseT switch for my thin client network 
and I think it's helped some with having multiple clients going at the 
same time, but I can't help thinking that each client could be doing 
better? 

How do you folks test your network cabling?  Is there a device in the 
$100 range that might help?  Can I run wireshark (or similar) on the 
server and see what's going on with the clients?  How would I set that up?

Thanks,

ck