iPerf2 vs OpenSpeedTest

iPerf2 measures network traffic performance, including throughput, latency, link capacity, and responsiveness. Testing uses a client to send traffic to a server. It can generate TCP and UDP traffic in one-way, bidirectional, full-duplex, and simultaneous multi-stream configurations. Measurements include one-way delay, round-trip time, jitter, packet loss, and throughput. It supports IPv4, IPv6, and multicast, including source-specific multicast joins, and reports can include enhanced metrics or use CSV format. The project manual describes an Android client with live meters for throughput, latency, and congestion signals. The manual also describes permit-key HMAC authentication using a timestamped HMAC-SHA256 value, with replay limited by a configurable time window. Its Professional feature set includes server access gating and remotely enabled server-side latency histograms. Measurements happen at socket-level reads and writes, so lower-level protocol-header overhead is excluded. iPerf2 and iPerf3 are separate implementations and do not interoperate. It runs on Android, Linux, macOS, and Windows, and can be self-hosted. Both listed editions are free.

OpenSpeedTest is a free, browser-based HTML5 tool for measuring internet and network performance. It measures sustained download and upload speeds, latency, jitter, and connection stability; the maker says its adaptive test supports connections from 1 Mbps to 10 Gbps and beyond. The browser test runs without an app, plugin, Flash, or Java installation. A responsive widget can be embedded in a website or app. URL parameters can launch a test automatically, run continuous stress tests, choose download, upload, or ping measurements, and set ping samples or parallel connections. For self-hosting, Docker images and source code are available for home, office, cloud, and enterprise environments. The setup guide calls for a public IPv4 or IPv6 address, a domain that resolves to the server, and an email address for Let's Encrypt setup. OpenSpeedTest supports HTTP/1.1, HTTP/2, and HTTP/3. The maker says Firefox is not recommended for stress tests longer than 10 minutes or speeds above 2.5 Gbps. The tool has been available since 2011 and is described for home networks, small offices, enterprise deployments, and infrastructure testing.