Collaborative Research:CRI:CRD Synthetic Traffic Generation Tools and Resources: A Community Resource for Experimental Networking Research

Principal Investigator: Kevin Jeffay, Don Smith
Funding Agency: National Science Foundation
Agency Number: CNS-0709081

Abstract
Networking research has long relied on simulation as the primary vehicle for demonstrating the effectiveness of proposed protocols and mechanisms. Typically, one simulates network hardware and software in software using, for example, the widely used ns-2 simulator [3]. Experimentation proceeds by simulating the use of the network by a given population of users using applications such as ftp or web browsers. Synthetic workload generators are used to inject data into the network according to a model of how the applications or users behave. In order to perform realistic network simulations, one needs a traffic generator that is capable of generating realistic synthetic traffic in a closed-loop fashion that “looks like” traffic found on an actual network. Unfortunately, the networking community suffers from a lack of validated tools and models suitable for synthetic traffic generation. As a result, all too often, networking technology is evaluated using ad hoc workloads with an unknown relationship traffic seen on real links. Intellectual Merit: This project is a collaborative effort to develop a synthetic traffic generation resource for the experimental networking research community. The resource consists of (1) synthetic traffic generators for the ns-2, ns-3, and GTNets software simulators, and Linux and BSD-based testbeds, (2) a repository of datasets to be used by the traffic generators to generate traffic that is statistically equivalent to traffic found on a variety of network links including campus networks, wide-area backbone networks, corporate intranets, wireless networks, etc, and (3) a set of traffic analysis tools to enable researchers to generate empirical models of traffic on network links of interest and to use these models to drive the synthetic traffic generation process. Broader Impact: The goal of the resource is to enable researchers to perform experiments using traffic that is either statistically equivalent to that found on actual network links or deviates from such traffic in controlled and meaningful ways. In this manner we hope to improve the state of networking research by enabling more realistic and more controlled experimentation. The project combines the previous work of the PIs on the Swing [X], Harpoon [Y], and tmix [Z] traffic generation systems. We will develop a common architectural platform for synthetic traffic generation that integrates these existing systems into a common framework and implement instances of the architecture for the aforementioned simulators and operating systems. To ensure we are meeting the needs of networking researchers we will establish an advisory board consisting of the implementers and supporters of the major software simulators and testbed platforms. In addition, we will propose to host a workshop at SIGCOMM in 2008 on synthetic traffic generation principles.