Various ways to debug networking issues on an IBM i using the 5250 or SSH.
5250 Commands for debugging networking on the IBM i
QSYS/PING RMTSYS(example.com)
QSYS/TRACEROUTE RMTSYS(example.com)
QSYS/NETSTAT
or you could download Perzl binaries and run various AIX/Unix tools for networking.
PASE/AIX/IBM’s Unix tools for networking
NetCat
Downlaod: http://www.perzl.org/aix/index.php?n=main.netcat
Nmap
Downlaod: http://www.perzl.org/aix/index.php?n=main.nmap
iperf
Downlaod: http://www.perzl.org/aix/index.php?n=Main.iperf
Openssl (usually already installed)
openssl s_client -connect example.com:443
Example of downloading and installing a tool from perzl’s website
wget http://www.oss4aix.org/download/RPMS/netcat/netcat-1.10-2.aix5.1.ppc.rpm
rpm –ignoreos –ignorearch –nodeps –replacepkgs -hUv netcat-1.10-2.aix5.1.ppc.rpm
group system does not exist - using root netcat ##################################################
$ netcat -l -p 45678
$ netcat 127.0.0.1 45678
Send a message to the server
$ netcat 127.0.0.1 45678 Hello Server this is the client
$ netcat -l 45678
Hello Server this is the client
ctrl+c twice to break out of the connection
Bandwidth Test
Measure the actual network speed between your IBM i and your computer as network packets traverses various ethernet/wifi cards, wired/wireless connections, routers and switches.
#Server | |
iperf -s -i 1 | |
#client | |
iperf -c <server_ip> -i 1 | |
#other options | |
iperf –help |
#Server (note sometimes nc is netcat instead) | |
nc -v -v -l -n -p 2222 >/dev/null | |
#Client | |
time yes|nc -v -v -n 192.168.0.8 2222 >/dev/null | |
#Stop by using ctrl+c | |
sent 87478392, rcvd 0 | |
real 0m9.993s | |
#Take the bytes sent times by 8 (conversion bytes->bits) and divided by time elapsed to get Mb/s (Megabits per second) | |
#70Mb/s (=87478392*8/9.993) | |
reference: http://deice.daug.net/netcat_speed.html
OSI Networking Layers
Below is the OSI model which is the way communications between computer systems usually travel from a high level view without digging into the technologies used.