[OT] How to test a bunch of ethernet cards of a cluster?

["James He" <icrazy@gmail.com>]

Hi, all

My boss wants me to test a bunch of gigabit ethernet cards of a
cluster. He kept getting time-out problems when running some MPI jobs
on the cluster. The problem only happens when the network traffic is
very high (~100MB/s). Therefore, he wants me to determine which
ethernet card(s) is/are having the problem when the traffic is high.
(We don't get any useful information from syslog or the log files of
MPI jobs.)

I've seen people testing the ethernet card using nc (netcat) -- just
transfer some files using nc and then compare them. Is there any
better way to do this, or any suggestions about some existing
softwares which can automate this, for I have to test a bunch of them?
Thanks a lot.

--
Best regards,

James He