Bandwidth tester for Twitch

The most popular streaming platform for Twitch, YouTube, Mixer and Facebook. Cloud-based and used by 70% of Twitch. Grow with Streamlabs Open Broadcast Software (OBS), alerts, 1000+ overlays, analytics, chatbot, tipping, merch and more.

TwitchTest creates a test stream to Twitch, using the '?bandwidthtest' option so your channel doesn't actually go live. It will attempt to stream at up to 10 mbps and show the achieved bitrate for each server. An estimation of the connection quality is presented, which is based on the number of retransmissions required and how consistent the delay between consecutive sends are. A connection quality of 80+ is recommended for a reliable stream. The TCP window size (SO_SNDBUF) can be adjusted to see what effects it has, the default setting matches what is used in OBS.

Requires Administrator privileges to run, as the Windows TCP connection metrics API is only available to applications running as administrator.

A pre-compiled binary for Windows can be downloaded at https://r1ch.net/projects/twitchtest.

A Network Traffic (Bandwidth) Monitor is a tool that will assist you in keeping an eye on inbound and outbound bandwidth within you network and help you identify which hosts are using the most bandwidth.

Bandwidth Monitoring is important in every network and should be a top priority for all Network engineers and administrators in order to know exactly what is going on in your network at all times.

In many instances, utilizing tools to keep tabs on your network allows for oversight into what is going on in your LAN and potentially catching high-traffic processes, programs and more importantly, users who are abusing precious network resources.

We've all been in that position where an end-user storms into your office and says the their internet or network is almost unusable and all programs and files are taking “Forever” to open up.

The cause can be one of many things, but if you've exhausted all possible end-user remedies (such as diagnosing issues on that individuals actual machine and drilling down into their processes and programs that are running) and the problem still has not been fixed, then its time to take a step back and see if the network has a bottleneck and bandwidth consumption is really the culprit of the issue.

As your Local Networks become more congestion with the advent of BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) cultures and policies, we're seeing higher consumption on every end of our LAN and are taking further action into seeing whats really going on in our network and who are the top talkers and abusers.

Surprisingly enough, many times Network engineers can spot not only programs that are consuming way to much bandwidth, but users who are taking advantage of lax content filtering policies and using free time in the office to watch streaming videos, browse Youtube, Netflix, Facebook, streaming mp3 websites and much more.

On top of end-users, network admins can also trace odd outbound IP traffic to potentially catch botnets, viruses and potential security breaches that made their way into the network already.

Here's a list of the top bandwidth monitoring software and tools for Windows/Linux we recommend all network engineers, admins and IT Professional's use within their Perimeter to gain a greater insight into usage of their network resources.

Here's the Top 5 Tools/Software for Monitoring your Bandwidth Usage:

1. SolarWinds Real-Time Bandwidth Monitor – Free Download

This free Real-Time monitoring software from Solarwinds gives you the luxury of monitoring usage on multiple interfaces at the same time, while creating beautiful graphs to get a great visualization of whats going on in your network. Using this software, you can get a granular view of the usage and utilization of interfaces at once.

The setup of this software is very simple: Add IP address of network device you want to monitor, SNMP version and community string and then chose which interface you want to monitor on that network device.

After that, you set Length of Time you want to data to show on the charts and then set Warning/Critical threshold percentages that will appear on the graph for that particular interface you chose. Then Launch the monitor and let the software collect data and update the charts.

This RTBM tool from Solarwinds is great for ensuring that your load-balancing setup is correctly configured or if your troubleshooting Application network performance issues.

The software also allows you to specify refresh times as low as .5 seconds (or half a Second) to get a truly real-time overview of that interfaces utilization.

We highly Recommend Downloading this FREE Tool and get a glimpse into your network usage – Its Fast, Easy and FREE! Grab it HERE.

Setup takes about 1-2 Mins if you have the IP address and Community string of your Network devices.

Download:

2. PRTG Bandwidth Monitor

PRTG is very well known in the Tech industry as providing great tools for pretty good prices. We've included their free version of the tool that allows up to 100 Sensors for Free at no additional cost.

PRTG has a great table detailing what their software is good at and where it lacks in terms of features.

Ideal for Commercial and Education audiences. Have you ever written a script before? If not, this is the session for you. In this session, we'll take a beginner’s journey through writing bash scripts and cover things like writing output, accepting input, running basic commands using variables and where to go for more information. Adding a Script to Jamf Pro. If your environment is one in which scripts are stored in the jamfsoftware database, you can add a script to Jamf Pro using the script editor. Log in to Jamf Pro. In the top-right corner of the page, click Settings. Click Computer Management. In the “Computer Management” section, click Scripts. Target Mode Imaging. Target Mode Imaging (TMI) allows you to image multiple computers by connecting them to a host computer using a FireWire, Thunderbolt, or USB-C cable. This can be ideal when using a network connection is not optimal or supported. To use TMI, you run Jamf Imaging on a host computer. Jamf scripting variables. (Optional) To use a script to install macOS, use the Scripts payload to add the script and configure the settings. For information, see Managing Scripts and Running Scripts in the Jamf Pro Administrator's Guide. Note: You can also use Jamf Helper to add additional end-user messaging. Select the Files and Processes payload and click Configure.

We'll summarize this quickly to show you exactly what the strengths and weaknesses of this software are: Using WMI and SNMP, you can get a good indication of the volume or amount of traffic at the IP level (layer 3 level) and give you a good indication of layer 2 and layer 3 counters and events, including errors and broadcasts you have.

On the flip side, it also acts as a packet sniffer which will give you a good overview of Layer 4 services.

PRTG is a great tool if you looking to really scale up due to their vast list of sensors, alerts and alarms that are built into the program itself. Setup is a little more involved than our Top pick, be aware of that, but nonetheless, its a GREAT Option. Grab a Free Download from Below and Get started immediately!

Download:

3. BitMeter OS

BitMeter OS is open-source solution that works for Windows, Linux and Mac OSX and is useful for keeping track of all network usage on your LAN. You can monitor bandwidth information either through the Web-Interface or Command-Line tools that they offer.

One of the only downsides to this program is that you'll need to have Python installed on your Machine before you install the desktop version of the tool. The program was last updated in August 2014, but many are still using it to monitor usage of bandwidth in their networks.

Download:

4. SoftPerfect NetWorx

NetWorx is a fairly straight forward tool that we've recently reviewed and are including in this list.

This little Windows tool can run on Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2012 – 32 bit and 64 Bit versions.

It has a FREEWare License and has a nifty interface that shows the very basics of monitoring your network traffic locally, along with viewing traffic of networked devices, which can be configured under the “Monitored Interfaces” portion of the Settings section.

This program is meant to monitor your Local Machine, but digging a little further into the documentation, you can see it has the ability to monitor traffic from a router or gateway that uses SNMP or uPnP protocols.

NetWorx will Poll these devices every 1 second to plot all the data on a graph, and if your a home-user and are using a consumer grade network device, chances are the device will not support polling at that frequent of an interval, but its still worth a try.

Business Grade routers and gateways will however have the ability send SNMP data that often. Its not a Fully-featured tool, but has the bones to get some good data, especially if you are trying to diagnose a particular machine or application.

Download:

5. ManageEngine Netflow Analyzer

ManageEngine has a great little Bandwidth Monitor add-on tool that can be added to their software package to further monitor traffic on your network and monitor bandwidth usage within your perimeter.

The Free version of this tool give you the ability to monitor any 2 Interfaces from a Device, which is bit limited, but will give you the data your are looking for from your router ports.

The add-on gives you the ability to fetch data uses SNMP and see usage details on both Device and Interfaces, instead of only off of Interfaces.

With its agent-less design, there's not need to install anything on your SNMP-enabled devices to interface with the program.

As with other software packages from above, this one also gives you the ability to setup Alerts based on certain thresholds you specify and generate reports based on several parameters, including:

• Volume Utilization
• Interface Speed
• and Packet Transfers

Overall its a great tool that adds additional value to the Opmanager platform, just remember you'll need to have that installed before you can use this free add-on and as we mentioned early, the Free Version only allows capturing data on 2 Interfaces on a device.

Download:

Conclusion

Finding the right network traffic monitor for examining whats coming in and going out of your network is a good way of having full control over it.

We recommend you grab one of these Free downloads and test to see which one works the best for your needs.

Some have more options than others, but all-in-all, a good network traffic and bandwidth monitoring software is going to show you the data you need to know – Which Device, Application or User is using the most bandwidth.

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