Lab Testing

What it does: three lab-shakeout tools in one — a throughput test (iperf3) to measure real bandwidth between two machines, a chaos/latency monitor that watches a link over time for drops and spikes, and a connectivity matrix that checks every host against every check so you can see at a glance what can reach what.

What you need: for throughput, iperf3 installed on both ends (Windows: `winget install iperf3` — the iperf.fr build is Cygwin-based, so if you unzip it by hand keep iperf3.exe AND cygwin1.dll together on PATH, or you'll get "cygwin1.dll was not found") and an iperf3 server running on the other end (the tool tells you the command). For the matrix, the list of hosts and which checks (ping, a TCP port, etc.) to run. Everything else is point-and-click.

Safe to run: the monitor and matrix are passive checks. Throughput deliberately floods the link at full speed to measure it — don't run it across a production path during business hours.

Reading results: throughput in Mbps/Gbps tells you if a link performs to spec. In the matrix, a green cell = that host passed that check, red = failed — a full red row is a host that's down or isolated; a red column is one check failing everywhere (often a firewall or a service that's off). The chaos monitor's spikes/gaps mark WHEN a flaky link misbehaves, which is what you need to catch an intermittent fault.