Software Alternatives & Reviews

tcpdump VS iperf

Compare tcpdump VS iperf and see what are their differences

tcpdump logo tcpdump

tcpdump is a common packet analyzer that runs under the command line.

iperf logo iperf

A TCP, UDP, and SCTP network bandwidth measurement tool
  • tcpdump Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-04-27
  • iperf Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-17

tcpdump videos

Tcpdump - Protocol Review 5 (TCP)

More videos:

  • Review - Tcpdump - Protocol Review 3 (UDP)
  • Review - Tcpdump - Protocol Review 4 (DNS) - Draft

iperf videos

Using Iperf to measure network speed / bandwidth

More videos:

  • Tutorial - How to use iperf to test local network LAN speed in Windows 10
  • Review - [HOWTO] Test My Network Speed?! [iPerf & JPerf]

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to tcpdump and iperf)
Monitoring Tools
45 45%
55% 55
Log Management
45 45%
55% 55
Security
62 62%
38% 38
Network & Admin
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare tcpdump and iperf

tcpdump Reviews

6 Best Wireshark Alternatives for Windows and macOS
The quickness that you can have with tcpdump over Wireshark is awesome. It is one of those tools that many network administrators prefer whenever they need to take a look at the actual network packets that are being transmitted. The Tcpdump is not as feature rich as Wireshark but the output of its packet dump can be used as input by other programs. Moreover, It can be used...
Source: techwiser.com

iperf Reviews

We have no reviews of iperf yet.
Be the first one to post

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, iperf seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 4 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

tcpdump mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of tcpdump yet. Tracking of tcpdump recommendations started around Mar 2021.

iperf mentions (4)

  • Microsoft: Don't Use Iperf3 on Windows
    Just some clarification: IPerf 2 is different from the iperf3 found at https://github.com/esnet/iperf. - Source: Hacker News / 5 days ago
  • Yet Another Bench Script (YABS): evaluate Linux server performance with this simple Bash script and utility
    Network - network throughput (both incoming and outgoing) is tested using iperf3 on several geographically diverse public iperf servers. Source: over 1 year ago
  • Speed testing Visible with a modem
    File transfer using iperf3 over Tailscale. I noticed that the bandwidth to my home computer (on a 500/500 fiber connection) was higher than with speedtest.net. For the first few days I was getting downloads and uploads of 28Mbps (+/- std dev of 6Mbps) and 150ms latency (+/- 35ms). After somewhere around 100GB total transfer (maybe half of that over Tailscale), it is now downloading and uploading at 10Mbps (+/-... Source: about 2 years ago
  • FTP upload speed isn't great
    I can add to this. I have two mini self contained projects to create multiarch static bins of mtr and iperf3 for general usage. Source: almost 3 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing tcpdump and iperf, you can also consider the following products

Wireshark - Wireshark is a network protocol analyzer for Unix and Windows. It lets you capture and interactively browse the traffic running on a computer network.

JPerf - This project gives a better UI and new functionalities to the initial JPerf 1.

netcat - Netcat is a featured networking utility which reads and writes data across network connections...

mtr - mtr combines the functionality of the 'traceroute' and 'ping' programs in a single...

Ettercap - Ettercap is a suite for man in the middle attacks on LAN.

NetworkMiner - NetworkMiner is a Network Forensic Analysis Tool (NFAT) for Windows.