[xGrape]

Is there any (free) software for measuring the speed of a local network?

I currently have 2 iMacs and a PowerBook hooked up to a 3com router, the iMacs with 100mbit ethernet, the PowerBook using Airport (airport extreme card + 802.11g support in router). However, the speed of the airport connection is far from 54mbit/sec, and the same goes for the wired connections. They can be fast at times, but stalls every now and then when transferring large files. It would be cool to actually check the speed of the network.

[f1000]

Why don't you just use Activity Monitor in Applications/Utilities?

The right-most tab is labeled Network.

[johnmccaig]

not to sound like a jack ass.. but just use a stopwatch...

if you transfer 100MB (big B=bytes) and it takes 50 seconds.

thats 2MB/sec. but you want mb/s (small b=bits)

there are 8bits in a byte so multiply that answer by 8. thats 16mb/s