TrafficV2 - IP/ethernet traffic generator

"TrafficV2" is free ethernet/ip traffic generator with GUI.

Typical configuration is to have at least 2 servers which run actual traffic and collect results and 1 or more client machines from which the servers are controlled and the results are displayed.

typical connection

Using this tool is very simple, once you understand basic concept:

From one client you can (and do) drive more servers!
You should drive servers via out-of-band port. This means, you should have one separate ethernet port which is not used for actual traffic on server machine.
The GUI client can run on the same machine as one of the servers. You will address the server as 'localhost' in this case.

This project started at Iskratel a few years ago as a set of independant "C" programs for testing ADSL access boards and modems. As number of ports under test increased, the tool evolved to python based client/server application with GUI. Over the time, numerous improvements have been made for speed and stability.

This tool is in use today at Iskratel's testing lab as a supplement to the hardware based ethernet testers (like IXIA or SPIRENT). Software based tool on a PC will probably never give you wire speed on multiple streams, but it is cost effective alternative if you need decent traffic flows on a lot of ethernet ports at the same time. This tool could be easily integrated into bigger automated testing environment or extended/modifyed in any way.

Features:

Runs on standard Linux based PC with multiple ethernet cards. Multiprocessor PC is recomended to achieve better performance.
UDP reception optimized for speed inside Linux kernel.
UDP generation for multiple streams from single thread (no task switching).
Client/server based multiuser system.
Graphical representation of streams activity.
Log events to file.
Save/Load configuration to file.
Easy to use.

Screenshots:

Performance:

This depends on hardware, of course.

Curent version (traffic-2.6) with proper kernel patch on dual-processor XEON (HT) 2.6GHz server is able to receive and process (check for errors) about 200.000 frames per second if no other activity is on the server.
The transmitter can send out about 85.000 frames per second on multiple streams. This is userspace generator at the moment, but it could be further optimized for speed inside kernel.

License:

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of version 2 of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.

Contact:

Send any comments or bug reports to:

Zoran Bosnjak <zoranbosnjak at users.sourceforge.net>
use sourceforge project page.