Setting up a UDP test

Docking the ports


  • Download the project from Github.
  • 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

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.


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. 


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 physical load.

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


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.


Scenario

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.


The report

Variation - Port on different subnets

One variation that can be done is to dock the LAN and WAN on trunk ports in different subnets.

In this demonstration, we have selected trunk ports 4 and 5. Both are capable of DHCP but are not in the same subnet.

  • Going to the scenario and running the same test again produces a different result!

Why has the throughout dropped so drastically?

            ⇒  The switch that connects the two different subnets has a speed of 100 Mbps

            ⇒  The physical load is 0.95 Gbps meaning much of that throughput is lost. However, the average throughput is 26.5 Kbps......

            ⇒  The reason for this is due to losses incurred from processing packets. The packet size is very small and each one must be checked