[c-nsp] {Disarmed} Re: IPerf alternative

[Raymond Burkholder]

On 08/12/17 12:55, Saku Ytti wrote:
> On 12 August 2017 at 18:21, Raymond Burkholder <ray at oneunified.net> wrote:
> 
>> I have successfully run iperf bidirectionally in tcp as well as udp and hit
>> link limits, even on smaller, lower capacity linux based boxes.
> 
> On what packet sizes? What link speeds? Linux UDP socket performance

Large packet sizes.  My goal with that testing has been to perform rough 
bandwidth testing through provider wan links.  It ferrets out basic 
provider mtu, duplex, and 'noise' issues.

> is terrible, even with rescvmmsg sendmmsg which iperf does not
> utilise, the performance is bad. XEON grade server CPU won't congest
> 1GE single dir - 1.48Mpps, without loss.
> If you don't care/look at loss, or use low pps, it's different.

this is where a/b testing comes in.  if test back to back, then I know 
how the boxes will perform:  confirm what their maximum pps rate is, and 
if there are any kernel based drop or limitations.  Then during wan link 
testing, I can see how things diverge from the baseline.

In my particular application, I'm not really testing forwarding 
performance on any particular box.

And as an aid to the original post, I was providing some baseline info, 
suggesting that iperf, broken as it may be, does provide some acceptable 
base line performance, depending upon the reason-for-test.

> 
> If you use TCP you're measuring the host stacks TCP implementation,
> and you have no visibility on network quality, because packet loss is
> hidden from you.

I agree with that, and do perform udp based testing.  iperf has some 
better post-test statistics when udp testing is performed.

But another interesting test scenario, for non-quantitative results, is 
to run iperf in tcp mode, and run tcpdump at the same time to see if 
there are more than just acks are happening, and what sort of loss is 
being corrected.

> 

-- 
Raymond Burkholder
https://blog.raymond.burkholder.net/

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