DOCUMENTATION 》 TOFFEE-DataCenter WAN Optimization - Google Hangouts Demo and VOIP Optimization

TOFFEE-Butterscotch yet another variant of TOFFEE can be used to save and optimize your Home/SOHO Internet/WAN bandwidth. Unlike TOFFEE (and TOFFEE-DataCenter) TOFFEE-Butterscotch is a non peer-to-peer (and asymmetric) network optimization solution. This makes TOFFEE-Butterscotch an ideal tool for all Home and SOHO users.

I always wanted to do some real experiments and research on packet flow patterns from High-bandwidth to Low-bandwidth networks via networking devices. This is something can be analyzed via capturing Network stack buffer data and other parameters, bench-marking, and so on. But eventually the data-transfer nature and other aspects is often contaminated due to the underlying OS and the way Network stack is implemented. So to understand the nature of packet flow from Higher to Lower bandwidth and vice-versa such as Lower to higher bandwidth, I thought I experiment with various tools and things which physically we can observe this phenomena.

Raspberry Pi is often used as a single board computer for applications such as IoT, hobby projects, DIY, education aid, research and prototyping device. But apart from these applications Raspberry Pi can be used for real-world applications such as in making a full-fledged networking devices. Raspberry Pi is a single board ARM based hardware which is why it is also classified as ARM based SoC. Since it is ARM based it is highly efficient, tiny form-factor and lower in power consumption with moderate computational power. This will allow it to work several hours on emergency battery backup power supply such as low-cost domestic UPS and or some renewable energy source, which is a prerequisite for a typical networking device.

Here is the TOFFEE WAN Optimization benchmarks of the TOFFEE version: TOFFEE-1.1.28. This is the current TOFFEE development version till date (2-Jul-2016). This is a HPC TOFFEE variant meant for high-end custom build servers and high-end desktops (i.e High Performance Computing a.k.a HPC). TOFFEE built this way often needs customized kernel compilation and build such as processor specific and hardware specific tune-ups since it is highly CPU intensive (if not offloaded via Hardware Accelerator Cards).

VPN Networks may degrade network performance due to various packet processing overheads such as encryption and by adding extra network protocol header(s) (such as IPv4/IPv6, IPSec, etc). This may inflate near MTU sized packets and causes excessive packet fragmentation. Here are the few examples of packet processing involved in a VPN (or a VPN like) Tunnel. With TOFFEE you can optimize these packets even before they get processed on to a VPN device. TOFFEE optimizes packet contents (application payload and transport headers) so that these TOFFEE optimized packets when they get processed by VPN devices (or VPN software stack) they may never need further packet fragmentation. Here is a deployment scenario of TOFFEE with VPN devices.

Here is my power-consumption measurements of various devices deployed within my home lab. I measured via my kill-a-watt sort of power-meter which is fairly reliable and accurate. I checked its accuracy with various standard load such as Philips LED laps and other constant power-consuming devices to make sure that the power-meter is precise.

One of the suggestions Google PageSpeed Insights tool suggested for The TOFFEE Project website is to minify the css and java script files. Minify Script files: When you read online about minification of your web script files, often they highlight file size savings and thus resulting faster download time and better website performance.

TOFFEE TOFFEE Data-Center is specifically meant for Data Center, Cluster Computing, HPC applications. TOFFEE is built in Linux Kernel core. This makes it inflexible to adapt according to the hardware configuration. It does sequential packet processing and does not scale up well in large multi-core CPU based systems (such as Intel Xeon servers, Core i7 Extreme Desktop systems,etc). Apart from this since it is kernel based, if there is an issue in kernel, it may crash entire system. This becomes a challenge for any carrier grade equipment (CGE) hardware build.