Traffic Generator

A minimal traffic generator.

Dependencies

• Intel DPDK
• libreadline (libreadline-dev on debian)

Installation

wget http://dpdk.org/browse/dpdk/snapshot/dpdk-2.2.0.tar.gz
tar xzf dpdk-2.2.0.tar.gz
export RTE_SDK=/path/to/dpdk-2.2.0
export RTE_TARGET=x86_64-native-linuxapp-gcc
cd $RTE_SDK
make install T=$RTE_TARGET

git clone https://github.com/melvinw/pktgen
cd /path/to/pktgen
make

Setting up DPDK

First, setup hugepages per: http://dpdk.org/doc/guides/linux_gsg/sys_reqs.html

Then, you'll need to bind any NICs you want to use to dpdk. You can find them using $RTE_SDK/tools/dpdk_nic_bind.py --status.

Load the uio kernel module and insert the dpdk igb_uio module with modprobe uio && insmod $RTE_SDK/$RTE_TARGET/kmod/igb_uio.ko.

With that all done, bind each of your desired nics to DPDK with $RTE_SDK/tools/dpdk_nic_bind.py -b igb_uio YOUR_NIC

Usage

Start things up with ./build/pktgen [EAL options]

The only EAL flag you'll really need to tweak is the core mask -c. Set it so there is one more core than the number of ports you plan to use.

At the tgen> prompt use the following flags to generate traffic:

-m M -t T -w W -n N -s MIN[-MAX] [-r] [-l]
Traffic Gen Options and Flags
        -m M          Transmit at M mpbs
        -t T          Generate traffic for T seconds
        -w W          Warmup for W seconds before making measurements
        -n N          Generate a uniform distribution of N flows
        -s MIN[-MAX]  Generate packets with sizes in [MIN,MAX] (or only of size MIN if MAX isn't specified)
        -r            Randomize packet payloads
        -l            Measure latency