PiPG - Raspberry Pi Network Packet Generator

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.

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.

I started TOFFEE-Mocha WAN Emulation software development on 1-June-2016. I took the existing TOFFEE components as a base. Although the TOFFEE-Mocha is entirely an independent fresh Open-Source WAN Emulation solution. Ever since I am in the process of defining and inventing features. So far I come up with the most important feature which is expected to be present in any WAN Emulation software is the packet delay option.

TOFFEE Optimized Satellite ISP Network: TOFFEE/TOFFEE-DataCenter can be used to optimize Satellite Networks (Satellite based Internet Networks, VoIP, Data, private leased-links) as shown. Ground station transponders can be connected via array of TOFFEE Devices and in the remote CPE can have dedicated or inbuilt TOFFEE with which you can establish a WAN Optimized Satellite Network Tunnel as shown.

WAN Network data can be optimized at various levels depending upon the network applications, protocols, topology and use-cases. So the amount of data you can optimize will depend on the strategy you choose to optimize. Such as: Network Packet level optimization, Session level optimization, File level optimization, etc.

Here is my VLOG Youtube video of the same which includes details about version release notes, future road-map and so on. The TOFFEE release is highly optimized and customized for hardware platforms such as x86-64 based Intel NUC and other Intel mobile computing platforms such as laptops and so on. This version (or release) is not suited and so not recommended to be used for high-end desktop and server hardware platform.

Now I supported and finished complete GUI support of these parameters so that you can configure, store, reboot and the same will restore upon reboot. Besides I complete the TOFFEE-Mocha Big-Picture page. The Big picture is an interface where you can find all the configuration (or settings) of the TOFFEE-Mocha. This is almost similar to CISCO device show all command but in graphical representation. Sometimes a network admin can also print the Big Picture page and paste it near to the device to refer its settings.

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).

TOFFEE Optimized Satellite ISP Network: TOFFEE/TOFFEE-DataCenter can be used to optimize Satellite Networks (Satellite based Internet Networks, VoIP, Data, private leased-links) as shown. Ground station transponders can be connected via array of TOFFEE Devices and in the remote CPE can have dedicated or inbuilt TOFFEE with which you can establish a WAN Optimized Satellite Network Tunnel as shown.

TOFFEE-Butterscotch is an open-source software which can be used to save and optimize your 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.