James,
One place to look is IP SLA, built into IOS. It can test a link with parameters including round-trip time with UDP echo, FTP, HTTP, etc.

You can calculate bandwidth for example by dividing an FTP transfer with bytes received / rtt.

Some more information here:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/technologies/tk648/tk362/tk920/technologies_white_paper09186a00802d5efe.html

There may be better options out there, and keep in mind you may not be able to max out 1Gb/s with every platform doing an FTP transfer to flash on all platforms.

You could also just use very big ping floods with a 0 timeout, but again, mileage may vary depending on CPU and platform. Also, maybe your provider doesn't appreciate ping floods and might block them. Make sure your MTU is high enough to get to your ultimate destination instead of pinging the next-hop interface. The next-hop may have control-plane policing, or it could just be considered rude :)

Regards,
John Gill
cisco

On 5/31/11 5:13 PM, James Bensley wrote:
Hi list,

Is there any way from either a router or L3 switch I can saturate a
line/link? I don't want to use a computer or external device.

Lets pretend that $provider has given me a 1Gbps up-link to a device
which terminates various 100 Mbps links, so having a pc with software
to pump out 1Gbps would be no good. Since most people have up links
many times faster that most other ports on their routers/switches how
can I test the up link throughput from the device.

If for what ever reason I had 1Gbps access ports with a 1Gbps up link
I could use a pc/hardware traffic generator and test the link and for
example routers ability to policy route and filter at 1Gbps but I just
want to test the physical link its self for its top end throughput.

Pointers anyone?
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