Easy Traffic Generator (ETG) — An Intuitive Traffic Generator to Facilitate Network Debugging

A fundamental task to evaluate networking prototypes is the development of different traffic profiles toward the assessment of specific aspects of an experiment [5]. In this regard, there are several open source tools ranging from packet crafter emulators to traffic simulation tools to emulate/simulate traffic in the different layers of the network stack [1], [2], [3]. However, current open source tools do not allow for the development of different traffic profiles in a straightforward and intuitive way, instead of requiring the development of several scripts to concatenate regular workload series, which can be, depending on the experiment, a complex task to create a proper evaluation. To facilitate the development and assessment of network experiments, this thesis proposes the design and prototypical implementation of a tool to simplify the network evaluation task, enabling users to set workload traces over a defined time interval intuitively.

Network analysis plays a key-role in providing fundamental knowledge about the underlying network infrastructure being a fundamental task for network managers in order to troubleshoot networking issues [5], [6], [7]. Tools range since a simple ping in order to test the connectivity between two hosts, to advanced traffic generation tools allowing to evaluate the network behavior under specific conditions and traffic profiles. However, many of these tools comprise a large number of features to evaluate different traffic profiles and their use is often complex for inexperienced users [1]. Thus, an evaluation of the state-of-the-art regarding traffic generation tools is required to select a specific tool to be extended. Once selected, the design of such tool has as the main goal to automate/simplify the creation of traffic with distinct traffic profiles, such as taking workload values in function of specific time intervals from a file or to allow the creation of traffic through a graphical user interface. Also, the tool must take into consideration the network configuration, such as source and destinations devices and ports configuration. In turn, such information has to be translated into a script or file as input to an existing traffic generator tool. However, due to the explorative nature of this project, requirements and specific details of the tasks mentioned above may be updated in due course of the thesis during a discussion with the supervisors. 

[1] Ostinato packet generator. Available in: http://ostinato.org/

[2] D-ITG, Distributed Internet Traffic Generator. Available in: http://traffic.comics.unina.it/software/ITG/

[3] Iperf measurement tool. Available in: https://iperf.fr/

[4] Packeth. Available in: http://packeth.sourceforge.net/packeth/Home.html

[5] B. B. Rodrigues, A. C. Riekstin, G. C. Januário, V. T. Nascimento, T. C. M. B. Carvalho and C. Meirosu, "GreenSDN: Bringing energy efficiency to an SDN emulation environment," 2015 IFIP/IEEE International Symposium on Integrated Network Management (IM), Ottawa, ON, 2015, pp. 948-953.