-help

Print out a usage message.

-connect

This specifies the host and optional port to connect to.

-www

This specifies the page to GET from the server. A value of '/' gets the index.htm[l] page. If thisparameter is not specified, then s_time will only perform the handshake to establish SSL connections butnot transfer any payload data.

-cert

The certificate to use, if one is requested by the server. The default is not to use a certificate. Thefile is in PEM format.

-key

The private key to use. If not specified then the certificate file will be used. The file is in PEMformat.

-verify

The verify depth to use. This specifies the maximum length of the server certificate chain and turns onserver certificate verification. Currently the verify operation continues after errors so all theproblems with a certificate chain can be seen. As a side effect the connection will never fail due to aserver certificate verify failure.

-CApath

The directory to use for server certificate verification. This directory must be in "hash format", seeverify for more information. These are also used when building the client certificate chain.

-CAfile

A file containing trusted certificates to use during server authentication and to use when attempting tobuild the client certificate chain.

-no-CAfile

Do not load the trusted CA certificates from the default file location

-no-CApath

Do not load the trusted CA certificates from the default directory location

-new

performs the timing test using a new session ID for each connection. If neither -new nor -reuse arespecified, they are both on by default and executed in sequence.

-reuse

performs the timing test using the same session ID; this can be used as a test that session caching isworking. If neither -new nor -reuse are specified, they are both on by default and executed in sequence.

-nbio

turns on non-blocking I/O.

-ssl3

these options disable the use of certain SSL or TLS protocols. By default the initial handshake uses amethod which should be compatible with all servers and permit them to use SSL v3 or TLS as appropriate.The timing program is not as rich in options to turn protocols on and off as the s_client(1) program andmay not connect to all servers.Unfortunately there are a lot of ancient and broken servers in use which cannot handle this technique andwill fail to connect. Some servers only work if TLS is turned off with the -ssl3 option.

-bugs

there are several known bug in SSL and TLS implementations. Adding this option enables variousworkarounds.

-cipher

this allows the cipher list sent by the client to be modified. Although the server determines which ciphersuite is used it should take the first supported cipher in the list sent by the client. See theciphers(1) command for more information.

-time

specifies how long (in seconds) s_time should establish connections and optionally transfer payload datafrom a server. Server and client performance and the link speed determine how many connections s_time canestablish.NOTESs_time can be used to measure the performance of an SSL connection. To connect to an SSL HTTP server and getthe default page the commandopenssl s_time -connect servername:443 -www / -CApath yourdir -CAfile yourfile.pem -cipher commoncipher [-ssl3]would typically be used (https uses port 443). 'commoncipher' is a cipher to which both client and server canagree, see the ciphers(1) command for details.If the handshake fails then there are several possible causes, if it is nothing obvious like no clientcertificate then the -bugs and -ssl3 options can be tried in case it is a buggy server. In particular youshould play with these options before submitting a bug report to an OpenSSL mailing list.A frequent problem when attempting to get client certificates working is that a web client complains it has nocertificates or gives an empty list to choose from. This is normally because the server is not sending theclients certificate authority in its "acceptable CA list" when it requests a certificate. By using s_client(1)the CA list can be viewed and checked. However some servers only request client authentication after aspecific URL is requested. To obtain the list in this case it is necessary to use the -prexit option ofs_client(1) and send an HTTP request for an appropriate page.If a certificate is specified on the command line using the -cert option it will not be used unless the serverspecifically requests a client certificate. Therefor merely including a client certificate on the command lineis no guarantee that the certificate works.BUGSBecause this program does not have all the options of the s_client(1) program to turn protocols on and off,you may not be able to measure the performance of all protocols with all servers.The -verify option should really exit if the server verification fails.