Test Methodology

When running experiments, at least two machines are involved in the process: a traffic sender and a receiver. Moreover, there is one management machine where the application is run; this station can be one of the sender or receiver machines, assuming that CPU overload will not impede the experiments deployment. The application entirely controls the experiments, by choosing all the experiment options and by launching the local or remote applications, which will start the measurements. The result files will also be saved and processed on the management station, through the same application.

Traffic generators used

• MGen/MGen6 is a set of tools, which provide the ability to perform IP network performance measurements using UDP/IP unicast and multicast traffic. This toolset generates real-time traffic patterns so that the network can be loaded in a variety of ways. Script files are used to drive the loading patterns over the course of time. It is possible to create script files, which emulate the traffic patterns of unicast and/or multicast UDP/IP applications.

• Netperf is a benchmark that can be used to measure the performance of many different types of networking. It provides tests for both unidirectional throughput, and end-to-end latency. Provides support for IP protocol version 4 and 6.