ClassBench-ng

A tool for generation of synthetic classification rule sets for benchmarking, which is based on original (no longer maintained) ClassBench. The format of the generated rules can be one of the following:

• IPv4 5-tuple
• IPv6 5-tuple
• OpenFlow

Requirements

• Python3
• Ruby 1.9.3+
• RubyGems

sudo gem install open4 ruby-ip docopt ipaddress

Installation

git clone https://github.com/classbench-ng/classbench-ng.git
make   # Downloads, patches and compiles original ClassBench in ./vendor/db_generator
       # Downloads the parameter files of original ClassBench to ./vendor/parameter_files

Patching ClassBench

Original ClassBench is patched using ./patches/improvements_ipv6.patch and the size of its statically initialized arrays is increased, where necessary. These changes are automatically applied on downloaded original ClassBench during ClassBench-ng installation.

By modifying ./vendor/Makefile the user can select a different patch from ./patches directory to be applied during installation. Basic characteristics of patches available in ./patches directory and suggestions when to use them are following:

improvements.patch

• improves precision of IPv4 prefixes generation
• use when IPv6 prefixes generation is not required

ipv6.patch

• adds support for IPv6 prefixes generation
• use when IPv6 prefixes generation is required and precision of IPv4/IPv6 prefixes generation is not crucial

improvements_ipv6.patch

• adds support for IPv6 prefixes generation and improves precision of both IPv4 and IPv6 prefixes generation
• use when IPv6 prefixes generation is required and precision of IPv4/IPv6 prefixes generation is crucial

Usage

ClassBench-ng can be used in two different ways:

• To analyse an existing rule set and extract a corresponding SEED.
• To generate a synthetic rule set from an input SEED.

./classbench -h | --help

Prints detailed usage information.

ClassBench-ng Analyser

The current version can successfully analyse IPv4 5-tuples, IPv6 5-tuples, and OpenFlow rules.

./classbench analyse tuples FILE FORMAT [-l]

Analyses FILE, expecting FILE to be in the format specified in FORMAT (see ./lib/tuples_analyzer/README for more information on how to specify the format).

• -l enables printing analysis error logs.

The output is an original ClassBench seed.

./classbench analyse of FILE

Analyses FILE, expecting FILE to be in the format used by ovs-ofctl. Fields extracted from FILE are:

• in_port,
• dl_src, dl_dst, eth_type, dl_vlan, dl_vlan_pcp,
• nw_src, nw_dst, nw_tos, nw_proto,
• tp_src, tp_dst

The output is an original ClassBench seed with an OpenFlow YAML structure as the last section.

ClassBench-ng Rule Generator

The current version can successfully generate IPv4, IPv6 and OpenFlow 1.0 flow rules.

• IPv4 SEEDs can be found in ./vendor/parameter_files
• OpenFlow SEEDs can be found in ./seeds

./classbench generate v4 SEED [--count=<n>] [--db-generator=<path>]

Generates IPv4 5-tuples following the properties from SEED.

• --count=<n> specifies the number of 5-tuples to be generated (default: 100)
• --db-generator=<path> specifies the path to an original ClassBench binary (default: ./vendor/db_generator/db_generator)

The output format is the same as of original ClassBench outputs.

./classbench generate v6 SEED [--count=<n>] [--db-generator=<path>]

Generates IPv6 5-tuples following the properties from SEED.

• --count=<n> specifies the number of 5-tuples to be generated (default: 100)
• --db-generator=<path> specifies the path to an original ClassBench binary (default: ./vendor/db_generator/db_generator)

The output format is the same as of original ClassBench outputs.

./classbench generate of SEED [--count=<n>] [--db-generator=<path>]

Generates OpenFlow rules following the properties from SEED that has to contain an OpenFlow section.

• --count=<n> specifies the number of rules to be generated (default: 100)
• --db-generator=<path> specifies the path to an original ClassBench binary (default: ./vendor/db_generator/db_generator)

The output consists of attribute=value pairs joined by , .

Known Issues

• the number of generated rules is usually lower than in original ClassBench (i.e., ClassBench-ng generates higher number of redundant rules that are removed in the last phase)
• ClassBench-ng Analyser does not correctly analyses source/destination port prefixes specified using a bit map in the ovs-ofctl format

How to Contribute

Contributions are welcome via:

• pull requests (preferred)
• e-mail to imatousek at fit.vutbr.cz