flent 0.10.0

The FLExible Network Tester

Python wrapper to run multiple simultaneous netperf/iperf/ping instances and aggregate the results. The main documentation is in the man page, available as HTML here.

Tests are specified as config files (which are really Python), and various parsers for tool output are supplied. At the moment, parsers for netperf in -D mode, iperf in csv mode and ping/ping6 in -D mode are supplied, as well as a generic parser for commands that just outputs a single number.

Several commands can be run in parallel and, provided they output timestamped values, (which netperf ping and iperf do, the latter with a small patch, available in the misc/ directory), the test data points can be aligned with each other in time, interpolating differences between the actual measurement points. This makes it possible to graph (e.g.) ping times before, during and after a link is loaded.

An alternative run mode is running several iterated tests (which each output one data point, e.g. netperf tests not in -D mode), and outputting the results of these several runs.

The aggregated data is saved in (bzipped) json format for later processing and/or import into other tools.

Apart from the json format, the data can be output as csv values, emacs org mode tables or plots. Each test can specify several different plots, including time-series plots of the values against each other, as well as CDF plots of (e.g.) ping times.

Plotting requires a functional matplotlib installation (but everything else can run without matplotlib), and can be output to the formats supported by matplotlib by specifying the output filename with -o output.{png,ps,pdf,svg}. If no output file is specified, the plot is diplayed using matplotlib’s interactive plot browser, which also allows saving of the output (in .png format).

The basic invocation is ./flent -H <host> <test_name>. Various options to control test parameters are available; try running ./flent -h. Tests can be displayed with ./flent --list-tests and the available plots can be displayed with ./flent --list-plots <test_name>.

Running tests and plotting/displaying the output is logically split up in two separate processes, but can be combined into one. When a test is run, its data output is always saved in a file called <test_name>-<date>.flnt in the same directory as the output file selected with -o (or the current directory if no output file is selected). This file can be read back in with the -i switch, in which case the test will not be run again, but the saved test data will be used as input for plotting functions etc. If an output format is selected while a test is run, the test data will be used directly for this output, but will still be saved in the json file.

Installing

Install the package system-wide by running sudo python2 setup.py install or sudo pip install flent for the latest released version. Packages for Debian/Ubuntu and Arch Linux are available at OBS: https://build.opensuse.org/project/repositories/home:tohojo:flent.

Quick Start

You must run netperf on two computers - a server and a client.

1. Server (Computer 1): Netperf needs to be started in “server mode” to listen for commands from the Client. To do this, install netperf on the Server computer, then enter:

   netserver &

   Note: Instead of installing netperf on a local server, you may substitute the netserver that is running on netperf.bufferbloat.net by using “-H netperf.bufferbloat.net” in the commands below.

2. Client (Computer 2): Install netperf, then install flent on your Client computer. When you invoke flent on the Client, it will connect to the specified netserver (-H) and carry out the measurements. Here are some useful commands:

   • RRUL: Create the standard graphic image used by the Bufferbloat project to show the down/upload speeds plus latency in three separate charts.

     flent rrul -p all_scaled -l 60 -H address-of-netserver -t text-to-be-included-in-plot
   • CDF: A Cumulative Distribution Function plot showing the probability that ping times will be below a bound.

     flent rrul -p ping_cdf -l 60 -H address-of-netserver -t text-to-be-included-in-plot
   • TCP Upload: Displays TCP upload speed and latency in two charts.

     flent tcp_upload -p totals -l 60 -H address-of-netserver -t text-to-be-included-in-plot
   • TCP Download: Displays TCP download speeds and latency in two charts.

     flent tcp_download -p totals -l 60 -H address-of-netserver -t text-to-be-included-in-plot

The output of each of these commands is a graphic (PNG) image along with a data file in the current working directory that can be used to re-create the plot, either from the command line (see the man page), or by loading them into the GUI. Run flent --gui to start the GUI.

The json data format

The aggregated test data is saved in a file called <test_name>-<date>.flnt. This file contains the data points generated during the test, as well as some metadata. The top-level json object has five keys in it: version, x_values, results, metadata and raw_values.

version is the file format version as an integer.

x_values is an array of the x values for the test data (typically the time values for timeseries data).

results is a json object containing the result data series. The keys are the data series names; the value for each key is an array of y values for that data series. The data array has the same length as the x_values array, but there may be missing data points (signified by null values).

metadata is an object containing various data points about the test run. The metadata values are read in as configuration parameters when the data set is loaded in for further processing. Not all tests use all the parameters, but they are saved anyway.

raw_values holds an array of objects for each data series. Each element of the array contains the raw values as parsed from the test tool corresponding to that data series.