mirage_iperf

iperf tool on MirageOS

Description

This program is a network performance measurement tool on MirageOS based on the test iperf implementation included in mirage-tcpip (https://github.com/mirage/mirage-tcpip). You can measure the TCP throughput between two different MirageOS VMs by this tool.

Requirement

• MirageOS
• Hypervisor software(Xen or QEMU/KVM)
• Libvirt with virsh(https://libvirt.org/) and jq (https://stedolan.github.io/jq/)
  (if you conduct an automated measurement framework provided by iperf_run.sh or iperf_hvm_run.sh)

Usage

Step by step

1. Check your target path.
   TCP client in iperf_client, TCP server in iperf_server
   UDP client in iperf_udp_client, UDP server in iperf_udp_server
2. Edit the following variables in unikernel.ml of your target client program.
   • server_ip (= server IP address)
   • total_size (= total data size to be sent)
   • blen (= sender buffer size)
3. Configure your target programs. You must assign an IP address for each side in this step.

(client side using hvt)
$ mirage configure --ipv4=192.168.122.11/24 -t hvt
(server side using hvt)
$ mirage configure --ipv4=192.168.122.10/24 -t hvt

4. Compile your target programs.
5. Launch the server side at first, then the client side.

Automated measurement

• Xen or QEMU/KVM
  1. Modify domain xml files in ./template/ so that they can use a network bridge on your environment. The default bridge is vmbr0.
  2. Modify parameters in iperf_run.sh so that it can be used on your environment.
     CLIENTADDR : A host IP for libvirt where you want to run a client side VM SERVERADDR : A host IP for libvirt where you want to run a server side VM
     USER : A username you want to use
     OCAMLVER : An OCaml compiler version you want to use BUFSIZE : Sender buffer size
     ITERATIONS : # of measurements for each sender buffer size
  3. Execute ./iperf_run xen tcp /path/to/dir if you want to launch the TCP client and server side programs at /path/to/dir on Xen-based physical servers.
     1st argument : xen or virtio
     2nd argument : tcp or udp
     3rd argument : /path/to/dir (where you want to put the server and client kernel files)
• hvt
  1. Create and configure two tap devices on your hosts and check if they can communicate each other.
  2. Modify parameters in iperf_hvt_run.sh. The default tap devices are tap0 and tap1 for the server and client respectively.
  3. Execute ./iperf_hvt_run.sh tcp if you want to launch the TCP client and server side programs.
     1st argument : tcp or udp

Note

• UDP-based programs are partly compatible with the C-based iperf. This is just for testing. (The programs were tested with iperf-2.0.9)
  • C-based client with MirageOS-based server
    Note that you can check only the bytes transferred and bit rate. The jitter and packet loss rate fields (= indicated as "Server report:" in the client side output) are invalid as the server side does not measure them.
  • MirageOS-side client with C-based client
    No special considerations needed.