High bandwidth traffic generation

Question

Can anyone please help me find out whether it is possible to generate self-similar high bandwidth traffic traces with minimum average rate of 10Gbps using OPNET or NS2 or any other network simulation tool?

I need such a trace to evaluate the performance of an algorithm that will run on a core router.

Any suggestions are really appreciated.

Answer 1

Yes you can. Using Riverbed Modeler. They provides a self-similar traffic generator, specifically provide a pareto-distribution for it.

Answer 2

If you want to generate real traffic, I'd recommend using the MGEN traffic simulator. You can install MGEN easily on Ubuntu with this command:

apt-get install mgen

To generate traffic with MGEN, you need to run a listener and a sender. This command would run a a receiver to sink all TCP traffic on port 5000:

mgen event "listen tcp 5000" 

Then generate traffic with a command like this, which will generate 100 messages per second, of size 1024 bytes:

mgen event "0.0 ON 1 TCP DST 172.31.37.163/5000 PERIODIC [100 1024]"

For more information about MGEN, see http://www.nrl.navy.mil/itd/ncs/products/mgen.

If you want to generate traffic within the context of a Discrete Event Simulation environment like NS-2 or Riverbed Modeler (aka OPNET Modeler), you can do that very easily using their constant bit rate (or variable bit rate) traffic generation constructs. You see how to define basic data flows in NS-2 at http://nile.wpi.edu/NS/simple_ns.html. For Modeler, you'll want to read the docs on defining an "Application Definition".