# Cisco IOS IP SLA Traffic Generator
**URL:** https://forum.networklessons.com/t/cisco-ios-ip-sla-traffic-generator/1093
**Category:** Lessons Discussion
**Created:** [December 26, 2016, 10:42pm UTC](https://forum.networklessons.com/t/cisco-ios-ip-sla-traffic-generator/1093 "2016-12-26T22:42:04Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@ReneMolenaar](https://forum.networklessons.com/u/ReneMolenaar)
#### Post date: [December 26, 2016, 10:42pm UTC](https://forum.networklessons.com/t/cisco-ios-ip-sla-traffic-generator/1093/1 "2016-12-26T22:42:04Z")
This topic is to discuss the following lesson:
> **[Cisco IOS IP SLA Traffic Generator](https://networklessons.com/quality-of-service/cisco-ios-ip-sla-traffic-generator)**
>
> This lesson explains how to use IP SLA as a traffic generator for 16kbps, 32kbps, 64kbps and 128kbps traffic streams.
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### Author:  [@ReneMolenaar](https://forum.networklessons.com/u/ReneMolenaar)
#### Post date: [May 30, 2014, 7:48am UTC](https://forum.networklessons.com/t/cisco-ios-ip-sla-traffic-generator/1093/2 "2014-05-30T07:48:56Z")
Great post(s)! Thank you!
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### Author:  [@raymond.deasy](https://forum.networklessons.com/u/raymond.deasy)
#### Post date: [July 2, 2014, 7:59am UTC](https://forum.networklessons.com/t/cisco-ios-ip-sla-traffic-generator/1093/3 "2014-07-02T07:59:27Z")
great work, Really useful info there,
Thanks,
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### Author:  [@system](https://forum.networklessons.com/u/system)
#### Post date: [August 3, 2014, 4:11am UTC](https://forum.networklessons.com/t/cisco-ios-ip-sla-traffic-generator/1093/4 "2014-08-03T04:11:29Z")
Good post. Keep up the good work. Thanks.
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### Author:  [@niuhongfei](https://forum.networklessons.com/u/niuhongfei)
#### Post date: [March 9, 2015, 6:58am UTC](https://forum.networklessons.com/t/cisco-ios-ip-sla-traffic-generator/1093/5 "2015-03-09T06:58:07Z")
Hi Rene
The image file named as “ethernet-ip-udp-payload-sizes.png” in this post is broken. It can not be displayed properly. If it is not my broadband problem, then your image file gets something wrong. Please check it.
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### Author:  [@ReneMolenaar](https://forum.networklessons.com/u/ReneMolenaar)
#### Post date: [March 9, 2015, 9:44am UTC](https://forum.networklessons.com/t/cisco-ios-ip-sla-traffic-generator/1093/6 "2015-03-09T09:44:48Z")
Hi Hongfei,
Thanks for letting me know, I just re-uploaded this image.
Rene
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### Author:  [@rubenrojasgdo](https://forum.networklessons.com/u/rubenrojasgdo)
#### Post date: [September 7, 2015, 6:58am UTC](https://forum.networklessons.com/t/cisco-ios-ip-sla-traffic-generator/1093/7 "2015-09-07T06:58:27Z")
Thanks a lot Renne you doing the things very easy. I have see that you don´t mention this on R2 activated “ip sla responder”.
In my case I can´t see traffic on the R2 if I haven´t this comand.
Regards
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### Author:  [@ReneMolenaar](https://forum.networklessons.com/u/ReneMolenaar)
#### Post date: [September 7, 2015, 11:19am UTC](https://forum.networklessons.com/t/cisco-ios-ip-sla-traffic-generator/1093/8 "2015-09-07T11:19:42Z")
Hi Ruben,
If you want to see statistics with “show ip sla” then you’ll need to add the responder on the receiver. In this example, all I needed was to generate some traffic.
Rene
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### Author:  [@mangatoea](https://forum.networklessons.com/u/mangatoea)
#### Post date: [September 26, 2015, 4:13pm UTC](https://forum.networklessons.com/t/cisco-ios-ip-sla-traffic-generator/1093/9 "2015-09-26T16:13:44Z")
Hi Rene,
I was wondering, can a test like this be used to lets say sweep a range from lets say 16k to 1M on TCP or UDP and then check up until which load it was successful?
A test like that would be useful to have to measure the actual speed of a link like for DSL over ATM or metro ethernet.
I have always been looking for something like that.
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### Author:  [@ReneMolenaar](https://forum.networklessons.com/u/ReneMolenaar)
#### Post date: [September 28, 2015, 1:04pm UTC](https://forum.networklessons.com/t/cisco-ios-ip-sla-traffic-generator/1093/10 "2015-09-28T13:04:23Z")
Hi Edwin,
Hmm not really, to test something like this I would try iperf:
> **[Bandwidth Delay Product](https://networklessons.com/cisco/ccnp-route/bandwidth-delay-product)**
>
> This lesson explains what the bandwidth delay product is, how to calculate it and how to test it with iPerf.
Rene
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### Author:  [@mangatoea](https://forum.networklessons.com/u/mangatoea)
#### Post date: [September 29, 2015, 8:56am UTC](https://forum.networklessons.com/t/cisco-ios-ip-sla-traffic-generator/1093/11 "2015-09-29T08:56:24Z")
hi Rene,
yes iperf is great and probably one of the best tools out there for that purpose but i am looking for a way to test throughput from cisco to cisco without the use of external tool like iperf
i have been looking at ttcp but i cannot find enough doc to be able to pull off a simple throughput test brtween lets say 2 100mb links
i know it should be possible with ttcp but i just dont know how, this tool could be what i am looking for but i cannot find usefull info on the net on how to perform tests with it..
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### Author:  [@ReneMolenaar](https://forum.networklessons.com/u/ReneMolenaar)
#### Post date: [September 29, 2015, 9:02pm UTC](https://forum.networklessons.com/t/cisco-ios-ip-sla-traffic-generator/1093/12 "2015-09-29T21:02:30Z")
Hi Edwin,
I think I can create an example for TTCP but i’m not sure how useful it will be. From what I’ve read, it doesn’t use CEF but everything is process switched so it will be difficult to saturate a \> 100 Mbps link with traffic.
If you are interested then I’ll create a writeup though.
Rene
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### Author:  [@dmsanch1](https://forum.networklessons.com/u/dmsanch1)
#### Post date: [November 28, 2015, 6:35pm UTC](https://forum.networklessons.com/t/cisco-ios-ip-sla-traffic-generator/1093/13 "2015-11-28T18:35:30Z")
Hi Rene,
You use ethernet frame header for calculations. Why you not take care of FCS(4 bytes) and EtherType (2 bytes)?. Total ethernet length shoud be :
8 bytes of preamble + 12 bytes MAC + 2 bytes ethertype/lengt + payload + 4 bytes FCS = 26 bytes + 20 bytes IP + 8 bytes udp = 54 bytes. So you shoud use a payload of 46 bytes for a total frame size of 100 bytes. Is not that right?
Thanks to you
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### Author:  [@ReneMolenaar](https://forum.networklessons.com/u/ReneMolenaar)
#### Post date: [December 1, 2015, 3:23pm UTC](https://forum.networklessons.com/t/cisco-ios-ip-sla-traffic-generator/1093/14 "2015-12-01T15:23:16Z")
Hi Diego,
There’s a difference between the L2 header and the “physically” transmitted frame. Here’s what belongs to the header:
Destination MAC: 6 bytes
Source MAC: 6 bytes
Ethertype: 2 bytes
FCS: 4 bytes
That’s 18 bytes in total.
The preamble (7 bytes) and start of frame delimited (1 byte) are not included with the L2 header.
Hope this helps.
Rene
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### Author:  [@bhargavisharma3](https://forum.networklessons.com/u/bhargavisharma3)
#### Post date: [September 26, 2016, 10:27am UTC](https://forum.networklessons.com/t/cisco-ios-ip-sla-traffic-generator/1093/15 "2016-09-26T10:27:36Z")
Hi Rene,
What about MTU size ?
Thanks!!
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### Author:  [@ReneMolenaar](https://forum.networklessons.com/u/ReneMolenaar)
#### Post date: [October 10, 2016, 9:22pm UTC](https://forum.networklessons.com/t/cisco-ios-ip-sla-traffic-generator/1093/16 "2016-10-10T21:22:00Z")
What about it? 🙂
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### Author:  [@mark1](https://forum.networklessons.com/u/mark1)
#### Post date: [January 26, 2017, 5:20pm UTC](https://forum.networklessons.com/t/cisco-ios-ip-sla-traffic-generator/1093/17 "2017-01-26T17:20:07Z")
I had the same experience as Ruben above. I only saw traffic register on R2 in the policy map statistics when I added ip sla responder to R2’s config. I tested a couple of times (Cisco VIRL iosv version 15.6(2)T). Great tool though! I’ll definitely find this useful in my QoS studies.
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### Author:  [@daniel.campos](https://forum.networklessons.com/u/daniel.campos)
#### Post date: [March 31, 2017, 3:51pm UTC](https://forum.networklessons.com/t/cisco-ios-ip-sla-traffic-generator/1093/18 "2017-03-31T15:51:57Z")
HI Rene,
Thank you for your article. I was looking for something to generate traffic like 200Mbps or more. I’ve tried iperf seems is not good. Do you have anything else to suggest or any approach to configure inside the routers?
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### Author:  [@ReneMolenaar](https://forum.networklessons.com/u/ReneMolenaar)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2017, 12:47pm UTC](https://forum.networklessons.com/t/cisco-ios-ip-sla-traffic-generator/1093/19 "2017-07-06T12:47:28Z")
Hi Daniel,
Generating ~200 Mbps of traffic from the router will be difficult. I usually use Iperf for this, what went wrong with Iperf for you?
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### Author:  [@Deep](https://forum.networklessons.com/u/Deep)
#### Post date: [October 31, 2017, 11:39pm UTC](https://forum.networklessons.com/t/cisco-ios-ip-sla-traffic-generator/1093/20 "2017-10-31T23:39:41Z")
Rene, when you say 200 mbps is difficult, is it still possible? Or depends upon platform? Generating traffic from cisco end to end itself comes really handy when you have other Linux devices in between. I see the IP SLA options too for TCP too? Any idea will this work, whatever lower.
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