Welcome to The Stem — what to use Discussions for + early roadmap

[krisarmstrong]

Welcome to The Stem discussions

The Stem is the network-performance-testing tool in the Mustard Seed Networks family. RFC 2544 throughput / latency / frame-loss / back-to-back, Y.1564 service activation, Y.1731 OAM delay + loss + synthetic loss, MEF service tests, TSN traffic class verification, RFC 6349 TCP performance, and a packet-reflection mode that loops frames back for end-to-end measurement.

This Discussions space is the right home for:

• General — how-do-I-do-X, deployment shapes, war stories
• Q&A — concrete configuration / usage questions
• Ideas — feature proposals before a formal Issue (e.g., new test types, new modules)
• Show and tell — share a test methodology, an SLA-verification template, a deployment write-up

Please use the Issues tracker for confirmed bugs and concrete feature requests with a reproduction or design.

Quick links

• Wiki — Quick Start, Architecture, Modules, Contributing, Releases & Versioning
• Latest release
• CHANGELOG
• Sibling projects: The Seed, NIAC

Roadmap themes (rough, not committed)

• Reflector parity on macOS — currently CGO-Linux-only; a pure-Go reflector path or a cgo-on-mac path is on the table
• RoleChip wired to backend mode-switch — the UI toggles role today, but switching doesn't yet reconfigure the binary live
• Test history export — richer CSV / PDF export with operator + customer branding
• Authentication modernization — Argon2id hashing, TOTP, WebAuthn / passkeys
• TLS UX — mkcert-style local CA install so the cert warning goes away

If any of those resonate or any feel like the wrong priority, drop a comment in this thread or open a fresh Ideas discussion.

— Kris