Basic Use Cases - Measuring Throughput

Having installed your ByteBlower system and checking that it works (quick self-test), you might be wondering what else you can do with it! There are endless possibilities so we will look at some basic use cases for the ByteBlower GUI to answer typical questions that testers have. One such example is:

• What is the maximum throughput of my system? 

This is a common question that a system user has and so in this article, we will guide you through a series of basic tests that can help you learn information about a system's throughput capabilities.  

This article will cover →

1) UDP frame blasting approach

2) TCP approach

          ⇒ The LAN and WAN ports will be connected to different trunk ports on the ByteBlower server which will enable different scenarios to be tested.

STEP 1 - UDP Frame Blasting Test

We will start with a UDP test. Frame blasting allows us to focus on the amount of data that is received. This approach doesn't require any limitation on the transmission rate of the data. 

• This type of test allows us to get results quickly.
• It is easy to control and debug

However,

• It takes time to setup
• Results vary depending on how good your initial estimate is.

1.1 Setting Up a First UDP Test

• Download the project from https://github.com/excentis/ByteBlower_GUI_examples/tree/master/basic_usecases. 
• Open the .bbp file 'measure throughput' 
• You will see a file that has two ports created → LAN & WAN
• The ports have been configured for DHCP
• The LAN and WAN ports need to be docked onto the trunk ports on interface 1
• The trunk ports that are chosen must be able to work with DHCP

1.1.1 Dock the Ports

Here you will see that two ports have been created for you and they have been named LAN and WAN. You will also notice that they have small red crosses next to them. This means that they aren't docked yet. 

• In this demonstration, the LAN and WAN ports are docked onto two trunk ports that are on the SAME subnet and that are DHCP capable.

1.1.2 Frame

When you open the 'Frame' tab, you can see that a frame has already been created. The frame is small (60 bits). Large frames tend to mainly load the network. Smaller frames allow for the checking of packet processing bottlenecks.

1.1.3 Frame Blasting

• Frame blasting flows create a repeating flow of frames with a size determined in the previous step (60)
• This frame blasting flow (UDP) is an easy way to simulate traffic.
• The physical load is the speed of the throughput. 
• The frame rate and interval are automatically calculated based on your choice of the physical load.

In this demonstration we are using a 1 Gbps port so the maximum speed is 0.95 Gbps. 

1.1.4 Flow

The flow tab is used to finalize the traffic flow by choosing which port is the source and which is the destination.

When you open the 'Flow' tab, you will see that 2 flows have already been created → 1 UDP and 1 TCP.

The flow runs from the LAN to the WAN and for now, no latency measurement is being made. This flow will be used to run the first test.

1.1.5 Scenario - Running a Test

Up to this point, there has been no real communication or connection with the ByteBlower server. Once we run the test, the server comes into the picture

Go to the 'Scenario' tab and select the correct scenario from the two that have been created (Max_frame_blasting).

The flow is the one from the previous section. The test duration has been set at 30 seconds though this can be changed as wishes.