Traffic Streams
Traffic streams allow doing various forwarding verification and QoS tests using BNG Blaster.
Traffic streams are be divided in bounded and raw streams. The first one is bound to an access configuration and derives addresses dynamically from the sessions.
A raw stream is supported on network interfaces only.
Configuration
Following a simple PPPoE example with streams.
{
"interfaces": {
"network": {
"interface": "eth2",
"address": "10.0.0.1/24",
"gateway": "10.0.0.2",
"address-ipv6": "fc66:1337:7331::1/64",
"gateway-ipv6": "fc66:1337:7331::2"
},
"access": [
{
"interface": "eth1",
"outer-vlan-min": 1001,
"outer-vlan-max": 2000,
"inner-vlan-min": 7,
"inner-vlan-max": 7,
"type": "pppoe",
"stream-group-id": 1
},
{
"interface": "eth1",
"outer-vlan-min": 2001,
"outer-vlan-max": 4000,
"inner-vlan": 7,
"type": "pppoe",
"stream-group-id": 2
}
]
},
"streams": [
{
"name": "BestEffort",
"stream-group-id": 1,
"type": "ipv4",
"direction": "both",
"pps": 1000
},
{
"name": "Voice",
"stream-group-id": 1,
"type": "ipv4",
"direction": "downstream",
"priority": 128,
"vlan-priority": 2,
"network-ipv4-address": "10.0.0.10",
"pps": 100
},
{
"name": "BestEffort",
"stream-group-id": 2,
"type": "ipv4",
"direction": "both",
"pps": 1
}
]
}
{ "streams": {} }
Attribute |
Description |
Default |
|---|---|---|
name |
Mandatory stream name |
|
stream-group-id |
Stream group identifier |
0 (raw) |
type |
Mandatory stream type (ipv4, ipv6 or ipv6pd) |
|
direction |
Mandatory stream direction (upstream, downstream or both) |
both |
source-port |
Overwrite the default source port |
65056 |
destination-port |
Overwrite the default destination port |
65056 |
ipv4-df |
Set IPv4 DF bit |
true |
priority |
IPv4 TOS / IPv6 TC |
0 |
vlan-priority |
VLAN priority |
0 |
length |
Layer 3 (IP header + payload) traffic length (76 - 9000) |
128 |
pps |
Stream traffic rate in packets per second |
1 |
bps |
Stream traffic rate in bits per second (layer 3) |
|
a10nsp-interface |
Select the corresponding A10NSP interface for this stream |
|
network-interface |
Select the corresponding network interface for this stream |
|
network-ipv4-address |
Overwrite network interface IPv4 address |
|
network-ipv6-address |
Overwrite network interface IPv6 address |
|
destination-ipv4-address |
Overwrite the IPv4 destination address |
|
destination-ipv6-address |
Overwrite the IPv6 destination address |
|
access-ipv4-source-address |
Overwrite the access IPv4 source address (client) |
|
access-ipv6-source-address |
Overwrite the access IPv6 source address (client) |
|
threaded |
Run those streams in separate threads |
false |
thread-group |
Assign this stream to thread group (1-255) |
0 (thread per stream) |
max-packets |
Send a burst of N packets and stop |
0 (infinity) |
start-delay |
Wait N seconds after session is established before start |
0 |
tx-label1 |
MPLS send (TX) label (outer label) |
|
tx-label1-exp |
EXP bits of first label (outer label) |
0 |
tx-label1-ttl |
TTL of first label (outer label) |
255 |
tx-label2 |
MPLS send (TX) label (inner label) |
|
tx-label2-exp |
EXP bits of first label (inner label) |
0 |
tx-label2-ttl |
TTL of first label (inner label) |
255 |
rx-label1 |
Expected receive MPLS label (outer label) |
|
rx-label2 |
Expected receive MPLS label (inner label) |
For L2TP downstream traffic the IPv4 TOS is applied to the outer IPv4 and inner IPv4 header.
The pps option supports also float numbers like 0.1, or 2.5 PPS and has
priority over bps where second is only a helper to calculate the pps
based on given bps and length.
The options access-ipv4-source-address and access-ipv6-source-address
are used to test the BNG RPF functionality with traffic send from source addresses
different to those assigned to the client.
Stream Configuration File
The command line argument -T <filename> allows to include
streams defined from a separate file. The format is equal to
streams defined in the actual configuration file. Such stream
configuration files could be generated by scripts and
easily merged with the base configuration.
{
"streams": []
}
Stream Commands
The session-streams command returns detailed stream statistics per session.
$ sudo bngblaster-cli run.sock session-streams session-id 1
{
"status": "ok",
"code": 200,
"session-streams": {
"session-id": 1,
"rx-packets": 59670,
"tx-packets": 54610,
"rx-accounting-packets": 59655,
"tx-accounting-packets": 54594,
"rx-pps": 1100,
"tx-pps": 1000,
"rx-bps-l2": 9028800,
"tx-bps-l2": 8240000,
"rx-mbps-l2": 9.0288,
"tx-mbps-l2": 8.24,
"streams": [
{
"name": "BestEffort",
"direction": "upstream",
"flow-id": 1,
"rx-first-seq": 362,
"rx-last-seq": 54593,
"rx-tos-tc": 0,
"rx-outer-vlan-pbit": 0,
"rx-inner-vlan-pbit": 0,
"rx-len": 1014,
"tx-len": 1030,
"rx-packets": 54232,
"tx-packets": 54594,
"rx-loss": 0,
"rx-delay-nsec-min": 37650,
"rx-delay-nsec-max": 98595049,
"rx-pps": 1000,
"tx-pps": 1000,
"tx-bps-l2": 8240000,
"rx-bps-l2": 8112000,
"rx-bps-l3": 8000000,
"tx-mbps-l2": 8.24,
"rx-mbps-l2": 8.112,
"rx-mbps-l3": 8.0
},
{
"name": "BestEffort",
"direction": "downstream",
"flow-id": 2,
"rx-first-seq": 362,
"rx-last-seq": 54593,
"rx-tos-tc": 0,
"rx-outer-vlan-pbit": 0,
"rx-inner-vlan-pbit": 0,
"rx-len": 1026,
"tx-len": 1014,
"rx-packets": 54232,
"tx-packets": 54594,
"rx-loss": 0,
"rx-delay-nsec-min": 43550,
"rx-delay-nsec-max": 98903960,
"rx-pps": 1000,
"tx-pps": 1000,
"tx-bps-l2": 8112000,
"rx-bps-l2": 8208000,
"rx-bps-l3": 8000000,
"tx-mbps-l2": 8.112,
"rx-mbps-l2": 8.208,
"rx-mbps-l3": 8.0
},
{
"name": "Voice",
"direction": "downstream",
"flow-id": 3,
"rx-first-seq": 37,
"rx-last-seq": 5458,
"rx-tos-tc": 128,
"rx-outer-vlan-pbit": 0,
"rx-inner-vlan-pbit": 0,
"rx-len": 1026,
"tx-len": 1014,
"rx-packets": 5422,
"tx-packets": 5458,
"rx-loss": 0,
"rx-delay-nsec-min": 41700,
"rx-delay-nsec-max": 96548542,
"rx-pps": 100,
"tx-pps": 100,
"tx-bps-l2": 811200,
"rx-bps-l2": 820800,
"rx-bps-l3": 800000,
"tx-mbps-l2": 0.8112,
"rx-mbps-l2": 0.8208,
"rx-mbps-l3": 0.8
}
]
}
}
The rx-outer-vlan-pbit might be wrong depending on network interface driver and
optional VLAN offloading.
The measured rx-delay-nsec-min/max shows the minimum and maximum calculated delay
in nanosecond. The delay is calculated by subtracting the send and receive timestamp.
The send timestamp is stored in the BBL header (see section Traffic). This calculated
result depends also on the actual test environment, configured rx-interval and host IO
delay.
Traffic streams will start as soon as the session is established using the rate as configured
starting with sequence number 1 for each flow. The attribute rx-first-seq stores the first
sequence number received. Assuming the first sequence number received for given flow is 1000
combined with a rate of 1000 PPS would mean that it took around 1 second until forwarding is
working. After first packet is received for a given flow, for every further packet it checks
if there is a gap between last and new sequence number which is than reported as loss.
The rx/tx-accounting-packets are all packets which should be counted in the session volume
accounting of the BNG, meaning session rx/tx packets excluding control traffic.
Each flow can be queried separately using jsonpath expression with name and direction or flow-id.
$ sudo bngblaster-cli run.sock session-streams session-id 1 | jq '."session-streams".streams[] | select(.name == "BE" and .direction == "downstream" )'
{
"name": "BE",
"direction": "downstream",
"flow-id": 2,
"rx-first-seq": 33,
"rx-last-seq": 27040,
"rx-tos-tc": 213,
"rx-outer-vlan-pbit": 0,
"rx-inner-vlan-pbit": 0,
"rx-len": 126,
"tx-len": 114,
"rx-packets": 27008,
"tx-packets": 27040,
"rx-loss": 0,
"rx-delay-nsec-min": 50450,
"rx-delay-nsec-max": 10561572,
"rx-pps": 99,
"tx-pps": 99,
"tx-bps-l2": 90288,
"rx-bps-l2": 99792,
"rx-bps-l3": 79200,
"tx-mbps-l2": 0.090288,
"rx-mbps-l2": 0.099792,
"rx-mbps-l3": 0.0792
}
RAW Streams
Streams with default stream-group-id set to zero are considered as raw streams not
bound to any session which is supported in downstream only. For those streams the
destination address must be explicitly set.
RAW streams can be used for traffic between two or network interfaces but also to send traffic from network to access interfaces.
{
"streams": [
{
"name": "RAW",
"type": "ipv4",
"direction": "downstream",
"priority": 128,
"network-ipv4-address": "10.0.0.20",
"destination-ipv4-address": "1.1.1.1",
"length": 256,
"pps": 1
}
]
}
If destination-ipv4-address is set to a multicast IP address (224.0.0.0 - 239.255.255.255),
the BNG Blaster will set the the destination MAC address to the corresponding
multicast MAC address automatically. For unicast traffic the network gateway MAC address is used.
Threaded Streams
With threading enabled, those streams will be started per default in a dedicated thread per flow. This means one thread per session and stream direction. A threaded, bidirectional stream assigned to 10 sessions will therefore run in 20 threads. It is also possible to assign multiple steams to a single thread using thread groups.
In most environments we see between 200.000 and 300.000 PPS single threaded is working. Depending on actual setup this can be also much more. With threaded streams we are also able to scale up to 10 million PPS depending on actual configuration and setup. This allows to start 1 million flows with 1 PPS per flow over 4 threads in example to verify all prefixes of a BGP full table.
The BNG Blaster is currently tested for up to 1 million flows which is not a hard limitation but everything above should be considered as experimental.
{
"streams": [
{
"name": "RAW1",
"type": "ipv4",
"direction": "downstream",
"priority": 128,
"destination-ipv4-address": "10.0.0.1",
"length": 256,
"pps": 100000,
"network-interface": "eth1",
"threaded": true,
"thread-group": 1
},
{
"name": "RAW2",
"type": "ipv4",
"direction": "downstream",
"priority": 128,
"destination-ipv4-address": "10.0.0.1",
"length": 256,
"pps": 100000,
"network-interface": "etg1",
"threaded": true,
"thread-group": 2
}
]
}
Start/Stop Session Stream Traffic
Session stream traffic can be started/stopped dynamically
using the commands stream-traffic-enabled and stream-traffic-disabled.
$ sudo bngblaster-cli run.sock stream-traffic-disabled session-id 1
Those commands start/stop the traffic for all sessions if invoked without session identifier.
$ sudo bngblaster-cli run.sock stream-traffic-disabled
Alternatively all session and stream traffic (including RAW streams)
can be started or stopped globally using the traffic-start and
traffic-stop commands.