Which Tools for Testing ?

Hi all

Whilst reading through some of the profiles on an LTM, I thought to myself I've never really tested a lot of this stuff. For example, the Fast HTTP profile claims to be faster that a standard HTTP profile, however, at this moment in time I am simply just taking F5's word for much of this. Clearly this isn't the best way to learn.

Can anyone recommend any free or low cost tools I can use for different test scenarios & further my understanding of the myriad of profiles?

These could include:

• Sending large amounts of traffic through the LTM, for example to simulating a DoS attack.
• Generating traffic from a large variety of source IP address.
• Measuring throughput, delay etc.

Bear in mind this is all to be done on a home PC which I understand limits my options. I'm sure there exists many enterprise-level tool to do the same thing, and cost a lot more!

Thank you.