Tcpreplay 4.0.0 announced

Today we are announcing the launch of the newly expanded capabilities of the Tcpreplay suite, expanding capabilities and increasing performance. Please visit our downloads page to get it.

Version 4.0.0 brings many new features and bug fixes:

10GigE wire-speed replay rates when using netmap network drivers
IP Flow/NetFlow support
Near-zero overhead option for generating unique flows every loop iteration
High accuracy, high performance --mbps option
Overhaul of timestamp methodology in main TX loop to maximize performance
API for other Open Source projects
Deprecation of redundant and obsolete options
ARM and PPC support including cross-compile support
Juniper Encapsulated Ethernet DLT and PPP Serial DLT support
Switch from BSD to GPLv3 license

Examples:

Here is an example output of tcpreplay illustrating 10GigE near wire speed and 157K flows/sec.

# tcpreplay --preload-pcap -i eth0 --loop 500 -t --unique-ip --netmap smallFlows.pcap 
Switching network driver for eth0 to netmap bypass mode... done!
File Cache is enabled
Actual: 7130500 packets (4608265500 bytes) sent in 3.08 seconds.
Rated: 1197981408.4 Bps, 9583.85 Mbps, 1853670.63 pps
Flows: 604500 flows, 157148.01 fps, 7121500 flow packets, 9000 non-flow
Statistics for network device: eth0
    Attempted packets: 7130500
    Successful packets: 7130500
    Failed packets: 0
    Truncated packets: 0
    Retried packets (ENOBUFS): 0
    Retried packets (EAGAIN): 0
Switching network driver for eth0 to normal mode... done!

Note that the above example is closer to wire speed than it first appears. Average packet size for this pcap file is (4608265500 ÷ 7130500) = 646 bytes. 10GigE Ethernet will add an additional 17 bytes for IFG, preamble, SOF and FCS which makes the the average frame size on the wire equal to 663. On wire speed is (663 ÷ 646) × 9582.85 = 9836 Mbps.

The next example is the same except limited to 9500Mbps...

# tcpreplay --preload-pcap -i eth0 -l 500 -M 9500 --unique-ip --netmap smallFlows.pcap 
Switching network driver for eth0 to netmap bypass mode... done!
File Cache is enabled
Actual: 7130500 packets (4608265500 bytes) sent in 3.08 seconds.
Rated: 1187498663.2 Bps, 9499.98 Mbps, 1837450.38 pps
Flows: 604500 flows, 155772.91 fps, 7121500 flow packets, 9000 non-flow
Statistics for network device: eth0
    Attempted packets:         7130500
    Successful packets:        7130500
    Failed packets:            0
    Truncated packets:         0
    Retried packets (ENOBUFS): 0
    Retried packets (EAGAIN):  0
Switching network driver for eth0 to normal mode... done!

When using pcap files with tiny packets, full wire rate is not achieved. The limiting factor is the flows per second (fps). Notice that in the following example we achieve 1.8 million fps and our packets per second (pps) rate has jumped dramatically.

# tcpreplay --preload-pcap -i eth0 -l50000 -t --unique-ip --netmap tiny-packets.pcap 
Switching network driver for eth0 to netmap bypass mode... done!
File Cache is enabled
Actual: 550000 packets (42600000 bytes) sent in 0.054122 seconds.
Rated: 787110601.9 Bps, 6296.88 Mbps, 10162226.08 pps
Flows: 100000 flows, 1847677.46 fps, 300000 flow packets, 250000 non-flow
Statistics for network device: eth0
    Attempted packets:         550000
    Successful packets:        550000
    Failed packets:            0
    Truncated packets:         0
    Retried packets (ENOBUFS): 0
    Retried packets (EAGAIN):  0
Switching network driver for eth0 to normal mode... done!