PiPG - Raspberry Pi Network Packet Generator

Software-Defined Wide Area Networking (SD-WAN) is a new innovative way to provide optimal application performance by redefining branch office networking. Unlike traditional expensive private WAN connection technologies such as MPLS, etc., SD-WAN delivers increased network performance and cost reduction. SD-WAN solution decouple network software services from the underlying hardware via software abstraction.

TOFFEE Fudge is a simple intuitive Network Packet Generator which can be used to create custom test synthetic Network Packets and can be used in various applications such as networking research, network infrastructure troubleshooting, ethical hacking, as a network software development tool and so on.

As a research experiment I replaced my Intel Core i7 5820K desktop PC with my Intel Celeron 1037U Mini-PC as my everyday desktop system. This is an attempt to reduce my overall monthly power consumption. As well an attempt to do feasibility tests and research to know how far Mini PC will dominate the market in future and to study the real potential of Mini PCs.

In the previous update (17-Jun-2016) I discussed about the upcoming new Random Packet drop feature along with other completed features. Now I completed the entire TOFFEE-Mocha Random packet drop feature. I completed all the kernel components and the UI support of the same. And to make GUI settings more organized I split the earlier Basic-Settings page into two separate pages namely: Packet Drop and Packet Delay. So this way it is simple to understand settings according to their functionality.

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.

When you are dealing Deep Space Networks (DSN) one among the most challenging parts is the Interplanetary distances and communicating data across such vast distances. This is where we are not dealing with common Internet type traffic such as HTTP/FTP/VoIP/etc but it is completely different when it comes to DSN so far. So optimizing data in DSN becomes mandatory. For example if you think one of the Mars Rovers, they have used LZO lossless compression.

When you build a WAN Optimization device with TOFFEE the entire packet processing (data optimization) takes place in software layer or in other words more precisely Operating System kernel space. However if you have any compression or encryption hardware accelerator hardware card the parts of the TOFFEE packet processing modules can be offloaded to hardware layer and thus improving its efficiency.

Large Infrastructure or ISP setup: In case if you are an ISP and interested in deploying a large customer WAN Optimized network or an add-on enhanced (WAN Optimized) network for select few customers, then you can deploy something as shown below. Although this case is not meant for hobby/DIY users. This is a feasible solution for high-end professional application and the same can be deployed.

Currently what we have is a single homogeneous (sort of) WWW Internet. Which we can consider as a single-dimensional network. What I propose is that we can create complete independent multiple Internets with each Internet having its own IP-address space, Domain namespace and an authority to manage Domain names. And these networks/Internets can be entirely IPv4 only based or IPv6 only based.

It is quite interesting that there are few web hosting firms are offering direct CDN based hosting services. Since it is a direct CDN based hosting, it is cheap, extremely easy or transparent CDN service. It is transparent, since each time you publish your content in the hosting web-server (origin server), it is immediately is in sync automatically in the user-serving CDN caching machines. Since the hosting vendor and the CDN vendor are all the same, it is also easy to use their services. There is no incompatibility issues, interoperability issues, and better integrated analytics, are all the benefits of CDN Hosting services.