Why iPerf when you can CyPerf

At Keysight, we’ve spent over two decades building industry-leading tools for application and security testing. From well-known names like IxLoad, BreakingPoint, and Chariot, our latest cloud-native platform, CyPerf, these tools have helped engineering teams validate performance, resilience, and security across a range of environments, from physical data centers to hybrid and multi-cloud environments.

Across thousands of such customer engagements, one trend has remained consistent: most teams—whether DevOps, QA, or network engineering—started with so-called “free” testing utilities, before reaching out to us. And we get it. Such tools are plentiful in the market, easy to grab, scriptable, and lightweight. However, over time, the limitations become apparent: unrealistic traffic models, a lack of actionable insights, limited flexibility, inadequate support, and unreliable results. In other words, they don’t exactly remain “free” anymore.

We also understand the reality—justifying a commercial tool isn’t always easy. Budgets are tight, timelines are tighter. That’s exactly why we built CyPerf Community Edition- CyPerf CE: a free, stateful, high-performance traffic generator designed to give modern teams the testing power they actually need. No licenses, no feature locks—just a robust engine you can plug into your pipeline, lab, or CI workflow.

What Makes CyPerf CE Different?

As we explored what was missing in present day “free” tools, one issue topped the list: they’re not effective at identifying real problems. What’s the point of a network test if it can’t detect packet drops, latency spikes, retransmissions, or failures? These aren’t just stats—they’re actionable insights. CyPerf CE goes deeper. Every test can be enriched using the --detailed-stats flag, unlocking a richer set of metrics that help uncover not just performance trends, but actual issues.

We also looked at modern traffic patterns, and most free tools fall short. Today’s networks are shaped by thousands of small, rapid-fire TCP connections that open and close in milliseconds. This is especially true in microservices, API-driven apps, and cloud-native architectures. To mirror this, CyPerf CE supports CPS (connections per second) as a native mode, which is enabled with the -cps flag. When paired with small-packet payloads, it generates compute- and network-intensive workloads that mimic real-world conditions across both the control and data planes.

Most such tools equate performance with bandwidth, but real-world testing demands more. Concurrency, session load, latency, and throughput all play critical roles. CyPerf CE, powered by Keysight’s traffic engine expertise, is designed to scale across all these dimensions—even on standard, off-the-shelf systems. With options like -p or --parallel, users can easily define fixed concurrent session counts (e.g., -p 10000 to cap at 10K parallel sessions), enabling precise, controlled, and realistic traffic modeling.

Another key advantage of CyPerf CE is the confidence you can place in its results. It is developed and maintained by the same engineers who build our commercial-grade solutions. It’s backed by specialized validation techniques we use internally to ensure accuracy in every metric. From latency measurements to detailed reports and traffic insights, everything is engineered to be trustworthy and repeatable. And if you ever hit a wall or have a question, you’re not alone—the team behind it is here to support the community as it grows.

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CyPerf CE isn’t here to suddenly replace every free tool in your arsenal—and it’s not meant to be a one-to-one substitute for tools. Instead, it introduces a new layer of capability that most free tools don’t offer today: realism, insight, and control powered by a commercial-grade traffic engine.

As adoption grows, so will the platform—more traffic types, richer metrics, and greater flexibility—because we want to showcase what’s possible when a free tool is backed by serious engineering. We built CyPerf CE to help you go further, and we genuinely hope you’ll find it compelling enough to not only use it but also explore what the full commercial CyPerf offering can unlock—if and when you need even more from your testing.

CyPerf CE Github link : https://github.com/Keysight/cyperf/tree/main/cyperf-ce

CyPerf : https://www.keysight.com/us/en/products/network-test/cloud-test/cyperf.html

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