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Robust 24/7 traffic generation

Mon Jul 05, 2021 1:15 pm

I have two very different cases where I need to generate some traffic to keep the link loaded, and would like to hear your opinion on available options:

1. Site-to-site IPsec connection over 1Gb/s link plus some paranoia. I'd like approx. 150Mbit/s each way to obscure the traffic patterns of the real payload.
Obviously I need queues working in this case to prioritize the payload.

2. Buggy R11e-LTE6 on remote site flaps connection when idle and finally freezes. Bugreport submitted, etc., but for now a packet (incoming packet?) each second is shown to be enough to keep the modem in shape.
In this case I'd like to implement the workaround in LHGGR itself, but I'm using LTE passthrough and I'm not sure if there's a way to inject something into this passthrough link.

In both cases I'd like to have a lightweight and robust method of generating the traffic that will work 24/7 without causing problems, could be activated on startup and then checked/restarted/otherwise kept working with scripts. If the method requires server on the other side, it should tolerate temporary outages of the server.

I have more than one MT on each site in both cases, so it's possible to generate traffic on another device if the generation method inhibits the features I need (Traffic Generator seems to bypass queues, what about IPsec?).

We have Btest, Traffic Generator, several pingers, and, I'm quite sure, several other not-so-obvious ways to generate traffic:

* Btest has only one test at a time from each client, requires working server on the other side, and from my experience seems to get stuck if the server temporarily disconnects. Doesn't look lightweight. If it's really capable of 24/7 operation?

* Traffic Generator is some magical unicorn that injects outbound packets to some strange point of interface (for some reason it requires outer MAC layer even if packets are injected into ipip tunnel). In my tests for case #2 it runs well for several days (over site-to-site VPN). Looks to be a good choice, if it won't cause problems in a long run (but will require a second MT device in case #1?).

* Netwatch could be good for case #2, but it have no packet size configuration, and I'm not sure if standard (small) packets will suffice, and I may need incoming packets to keep the link up, while the provider's gateway is not replying to the pings.

* /ping and /tool ping (do they differ?) seem to fit case #2, but I'd like the workaround to be independent from availability of my other sites (thus site-to-site links). Pinging the gateway from router behind LHGGR doesn't seem to work (LHGGR seem to emulate this gateway?), and operator's DNS servers are not replying the pings. Should I try to inject DNS requests to these servers with Traffic Generator?

* DNS lookups? Anything else?

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