Wireshark-users: [Wireshark-users] Measuring bandwidth, bad packets, latency

From: JM <hondgm@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2010 06:25:39 -0700 (PDT)
Hello,
We're going to do some Ethernet physical layer testing, basically testing the effects of different types of cable (for industrial/automotive).  For the most part, this will simply involve a single link with varying qualities of cable between the two PCs. 

Since I've already used Wireshark to analyze packets, I was thinking maybe it could also do this.  I've done some searching, but didn't find much.  What I'd like to have is two computers, or maybe just one with two NICs, send traffic through the link and report what the throughput, latency, error rate, etc is. 

If Wireshark isn't able to do this, or if an add-on isn't available, does anyone have any suggestions?  Free/open source is of course preferred.