WLAN tester

[Dave Angel]

On 01/28/2013 10:47 AM, Wanderer wrote:
> I'm looking to make a WLAN tester for a manufacturing test. Something that could send and receive a bunch of files and measure how long it took. I would repeat this a number of times for a device under test and then use some metric to decide pass/fail and create a report. What libraries are available for Python for communicating with networks? My google searches have been disappointing. I'd prefer to do this in Windows but I'll consider Linux if that is the better option.
>
> Thanks
>
For what version of Python?

Depending on what's at the far end of your connection, you may not need 
to do much at all.  For example, if you have an ftp server, check out
     http://docs.python.org/2/library/ftplib.html

in the standard library.



Since you're doing performance testing, be aware that it's quite tricky 
to get meaningful results.    For example, some connections have a 
satellite link in them, and thus have very long latency.  A simple 
protocol will go very slowly in such a case, but most downloaders will 
open multiple sockets, and do many transfers in parallel.  So you could 
either measure the slow way or the fast way, and both numbers are 
meaningful.

Of course, it's more than a  2-way choice.  Some protocols will compress 
the data, send it, and decompress it on the other end.  Others (like the 
one rsync uses) will evaluate both ends, and decide which (if any) files 
need to be transferred at all.  I believe it also does partial file 
updates if possible, but I'm not at all sure about that.

Naturally, the throughput will vary greatly from moment to moment, and 
may be affected by lots of things you cannot see.

-- 
DaveA