Internet Engineering Task Force Jan Novak Internet-Draft Cisco Systems, Inc. Intended status: Informational Expires: 31 July, 2012 31 January 2012 IP Flow Information Accounting and Export Benchmarking Methodology draft-ietf-bmwg-ipflow-meth-07.txt Abstract This document provides a methodology and framework for quantifying the performance impact of monitoring of IP flows on a network device and export of this information to a collector. It identifies the rate at which the IP flows are created, expired, and successfully exported as a new performance metric in combination with traditional throughput. The metric is only applicable to the devices compliant with the Architecture for IP Flow Information Export [RFC5470]. Status of this Memo This Internet-Draft is submitted to IETF in full conformance with the provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet- Drafts. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt. The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html. This Internet-Draft will expire on 31 July, 2012. Copyright Notice Copyright (c) 2012 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved. This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document. Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as described in the Simplified BSD License. Novak Expires July, 2012 [Page 1] Internet-Draft Flow Monitoring Benchmarking January 2012 Conventions used in this document The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [RFC2119]. Table of Contents 1. Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 2. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 2.1 Existing Terminology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 2.2 New Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 3. Flow Monitoring Performance Benchmark . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 3.1 Definition. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 3.2 Device Applicability. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 3.3 Measurement Concept . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 3.4 The Measurement Procedure Overview. . . . . . . . . . . . 8 4. Measurement Set Up. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 4.1 Measurement Topology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 4.2 Base DUT Set Up. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 4.3 Flow Monitoring Configuration. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 4.4 Collector. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 4.5 Sampling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 4.6 Frame Formats. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 4.7 Frame Sizes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 4.8 Flow Export Data Packet Sizes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 4.9 Illustrative Test Set-up Examples. . . . . . . . . . . . 17 5. Flow Monitoring Throughput Measurement Methodology . . . . . 18 5.1 Flow Monitoring Configuration. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 5.2 Traffic Configuration. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 5.3 Cache Population . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 5.4 Measurement Time Interval. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 5.5 Flow Export Rate Measurement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 5.6 The Measurement Procedure. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 6. RFC2544 Measurements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 6.1 Flow Monitoring Configuration. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 6.2 Measurements With the Flow Monitoring Throughput Set-up. 24 6.3 Measurements With Fixed Flow Export Rate . . . . . . . . 24 6.4 Measurements With Single Traffic Component . . . . . . . 24 6.5 Measurements With Two Traffic Components . . . . . . . . 25 7. Flow Monitoring Accuracy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 8. Evaluating Flow Monitoring Applicability . . . . . . . . . . 26 9. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 10. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 11. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 12. References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 12.1 Normative References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 12.2 Informative References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Appendix A: Recommended Report Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Novak Expires July, 2012 [Page 2] Internet-Draft Flow Monitoring Benchmarking January 2012 Appendix B: Miscellaneous Tests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 B.1 DUT Under Traffic Load . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 B.2 In-band Flow Export. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 B.3 Variable Packet Rate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 B.4 Bursty Traffic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 B.5 Various Flow Monitoring Configurations . . . . . . . . . 31 B.6 Tests With Bidirectional Traffic . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 B.7 Instantaneous Flow Export Rate . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 1. Introduction Monitoring of IP flows (Flow monitoring) is defined in the Architecture for IP Flow Information Export [RFC5470] and related IPFIX documents. It analyses the traffic using predefined fields from the packet header as keys and stores the traffic and other internal information in the DUT (Device Under Test) memory. This cached flow information is then formatted into records (see section 2.1 for term definitions) and exported from the DUT to an external data collector for analysis. More details on the measurement architecture is provided in section 3.3. Flow monitoring on network devices is widely deployed and has numerous uses in both service provider and enterprise segments as detailed in the Requirements for IP Flow Information Export [RFC3917]. This document provides a methodology for measuring Flow monitoring performance so that network operators have a framework for considering measurement impact on the network and network equipment. This document's goal is a series of methodology specifications for the measurement of Flow monitoring performance, in a way that is comparable amongst various implementations, platforms, and vendor's devices. Since Flow monitoring will in most cases run on network devices also forwarding packets, the methodology for [RFC2544] measurements (with IPv6 and MPLS specifics defined in [RFC5180] and [RFC5695] respectively) in the presence of Flow monitoring is also employed here. The most significant performance parameter is the rate at which IP flows are created and expired in the network device's memory and exported to a collector. Therefore, this document specifies a methodology to measure the maximum IP flow rate that a network device can sustain without impacting the forwarding plane, without losing any IP flow information, and without compromising the IP flow accuracy (see section 7 for details). [RFC2544], [RFC5180] and [RFC5695] specify benchmarking of network devices forwarding IPv4, IPv6 and MPLS [RFC3031] traffic, respectively. The methodology specified in this document stays the same for any traffic type. The only restriction may be the DUT's lack of support for Flow monitoring of the particular traffic type. Novak Expires July, 2012 [Page 3] Internet-Draft Flow Monitoring Benchmarking January 2012 A variety of different network device architectures exist that are capable of Flow monitoring and export. As such, this document does not attempt to list the various white box variables (CPU load, memory utilization, hardware resources utilization etc) that could be gathered as they always help in comparison evaluations. A more complete understanding of the stress points of a particular device can be attained using this internal information and the tester MAY choose to gather this information during the measurement iterations. 2. Terminology The terminology used in this document is based on [RFC5470], [RFC2285] and [RFC1242] as summarised in section 2.1. The only new terms needed for this methodology are defined in section 2.2. 2.1 Existing Terminology Device Under Test (DUT) [RFC2285, section 3.1.1] Flow [RFC5470, section 2] Flow Key [RFC5470, section 2] Flow Record [RFC5470, section 2] Observation Point [RFC5470, section 2] Metering Process [RFC5470, section 2] Exporting Process [RFC5470, section 2] Exporter [RFC5470, section 2] Collector [RFC5470, section 2] Control Information [RFC5470, section 2] Data Stream [RFC5470, section 2] Flow Expiration [RFC5470, section 5.1.1] Flow Export [RFC5470, section 5.1.2] Throughput [RFC1242, section 3.17] 2.2 New Terminology 2.2.1 Cache Definition: Memory area held and dedicated by the DUT to store Flow information prior to the Flow Expiration. Novak Expires July, 2012 [Page 4] Internet-Draft Flow Monitoring Benchmarking January 2012 2.2.2 Cache Size Definition: The size of the Cache in terms of how many entries the Cache can hold. Discussion: This term is typically represented as a configurable option in the particular Flow monitoring implementation. Its highest value will depend on the memory available in the network device. Measurement units: Number of Cache entries 2.2.3 Active Timeout Definition: For long-running Flows, the time interval after which the Metering Process expires a Cache entry to ensure Flow data is regularly updated Discussion: This term is typically presented as a configurable option in the particular Flow monitoring implementation. See section 5.1.1 of [RFC5470] for more detailed discussion. Flows are considered long-running when they last longer than several multiples of the Active Timeout or when the Active Timeout is zero, contain a larger number of packets than usual for a single transaction based Flows, in the order of tens of packets and higher. Measurement units: Seconds 2.2.4 Inactive Timeout Definition: The time interval used by the Metering Process to expire an entry from the Cache, when no more packets belonging to that specific Cache entry have been observed during the interval. Discussion: This term is typically represented as a configurable option in the particular Flow monitoring implementation. See section 5.1.1 of [RFC5470] for more detailed discussion. Measurement units: Seconds Novak Expires July, 2012 [Page 5] Internet-Draft Flow Monitoring Benchmarking January 2012 2.2.5 Flow Export Rate Definition: The number of Cache entries that expire from the Cache (as defined by the Flow Expiration term) and are exported to the Collector within a measurement time interval. There SHOULD NOT be any export filtering, so that all the expired cache entries are exported. If there is export filtering and it can't be disabled, this needs to be noted. The measured Flow Export Rate MUST include both the Data Stream and the Control Information, as defined in section 2 of [RFC5470]. Discussion: The Flow Export Rate is measured using Flow Export data observed at the Collector by counting the exported Flow Records during the measurement time interval (see section 5.4). The value obtained is an average of the instantaneous export rates observed during the measurement time interval. The smallest possible measurement interval (if attempting to measure nearly instantaneous export rate rather than average export rate on the DUT) is limited by the export capabilities of the particular Flow monitoring implementation (when possible physical layer issues between the DUT and the Collector are excluded). Measurement units: Number of Flow Records per second 3. Flow Monitoring Performance Benchmark 3.1 Definition Flow Monitoring Throughput Definition: The maximum Flow Export Rate the DUT can sustain without losing a single Cache entry. Additionally, for packet forwarding devices, the maximum Flow Export Rate the DUT can sustain without dropping packets in the Forwarding Plane (see figure 1). Measurement units: Number of Flow Records per second Discussion: The losses of Cache entries or forwarded packets in this definition are assumed to happen due to the lack of DUT resources to process any additional traffic information or lack of resources to process Flow Export data. The physical layer issues, like insufficient bandwidth from the DUT to the Collector or lack of Collector resources MUST be excluded as detailed in section 4. Novak Expires July, 2012 [Page 6] Internet-Draft Flow Monitoring Benchmarking January 2012 3.2 Device Applicability The Flow monitoring performance metric is applicable to network devices that implement [RFC5470] architecture. These devices can be network packet forwarding devices or appliances which analyze the traffic but do not forward traffic (probes, sniffers, replicators). This document does not intend to measure Collector performance, it only requires sufficient Collector resources (as specified in section 4.4) in order to measure the DUT characteristics. 3.3 Measurement Concept Figure 1 below presents the functional block diagram of the DUT. The traffic in the figure represents the test traffic sent to the DUT and forwarded by the DUT, if possible. When testing devices which do not act as network packet forwarding devices (such as probes, sniffers and replicators) the forwarding plane is simply an Observation Point as defined in section 2 of [RFC5470]. The [RFC2544] Throughput of such devices will always be zero and the only applicable performance metric is the Flow Monitoring Throughput. +------------------------- + | IPFIX | NetFlow | Others | +------------------------- + | ^ | | Flow Export | | ^ | | +-------------+ | | | Monitoring | | | | Plane | | | +-------------+ | | ^ | | traffic information | | ^ | | +-------------+ | | | | | traffic ---|---->| Forwarding |------|----> | | Plane | | | +-------------+ | | | | DUT | +------------------------- + Figure 1. The functional block diagram of the DUT The Flow monitoring enabled (see section 4.3) on the DUT and represented in the figure 1 by the Monitoring Plane uses the traffic information provided by the Forwarding Plane and configured Flow Keys to create Cache entries representing the traffic forwarded (or observed) by the DUT in the DUT Cache. The Cache entries are expired from the Cache depending on the Cache configuration (ie, the Active and Inactive Timeouts, number of Cache Novak Expires July, 2012 [Page 7] Internet-Draft Flow Monitoring Benchmarking January 2012 entries and the Cache Size) and the traffic pattern. The Cache entries are used by the Exporting Process to format the Flow Records which are then exported from the DUT to the Collector (see figure 2 in section 4). The Forwarding Plane and Monitoring Plane represent two separate functional blocks, each with it's own performance capability. The Forwarding Plane handles user data packets and is fully characterised by the metrics defined by [RFC2544]. The Monitoring Plane handles Flows which reflect the analysed traffic. The metric for Monitoring Plane performance is Flow Export Rate, and the benchmark is the Flow Monitoring Throughput. 3.4 The Measurement Procedure Overview The measurement procedure is fully specified in sections 4, 5 and 6. This section provides an overview of principles for the measurements. The basic measurement procedure of performance characteristics of a DUT with Flow monitoring enabled is a conventional Throughput measurement using a search algorithm to determine the maximum packet rate at which none of the offered packets and corresponding Flow Records are dropped by the DUT as described in [RFC1242] and section 26.1 of [RFC2544]. The Device Under Test (DUT) with Flow monitoring enabled contains two functional blocks which need to be measured using characteristics applicable to one or both blocks (see figure 1). See sections 3.4.1 and 3.4.2 for further discussion. On one hand the Monitoring Plane and Forwarding Plane (see figure 1) need to be looked at as two independent blocks, and the performance of each of them measured independently. But on the other hand when measuring the performance of one of them, the status and performance of the other MUST be known and benchmarked when both are present. 3.4.1 Monitoring Plane Performance Measurement The Flow Monitoring Throughput MUST be (and can only be) measured with one packet per Flow as specified in section 5. This traffic type represents the most demanding traffic from the Flow monitoring point of view and will exercise the Monitoring Plane (see figure 1) of the DUT most. In this scenario every packet seen by DUT creates a new Cache entry and forces the DUT to fill the Cache instead of just updating packet and byte counters of an already existing Cache entry. The exit criteria for the Flow Monitoring Throughput measurement are one of the following (e.g. if any of the conditions is reached): a. The Flow Export Rate at which the DUT starts to lose Flow information or the Flow information gets corrupted Novak Expires July, 2012 [Page 8] Internet-Draft Flow Monitoring Benchmarking January 2012 b. The Flow Export Rate at which the Forwarding Plane starts to drop or corrupt packets (if the Forwarding Plane is present) A corrupted packet here means the packet header corruption (resulting in the cyclic redundancy check failure on the transmission level and consequent packet drop) or the packet payload corruption leading to the lost application level data. 3.4.2 Forwarding Plane Performance Measurement The Forwarding Plane (see figure 1) performance metrics are fully specified by [RFC2544] and MUST be measured accordingly. A detailed traffic analysis (see below) with relation to Flow monitoring MUST be performed prior of any [RFC2544] measurements. Mainly the Flow Export Rate caused by the test traffic during an [RFC2544] measurement MUST be known and reported. The required test traffic analysis mainly involves the following: a. Which packet header parameters are incremented or changed during traffic generation b. Which Flow Keys the Flow monitoring configuration uses to generate Flow Records The RFC2544 performance metrics can be measured in one of the three modes: a. As a baseline of forwarding performance without Flow monitoring b. At a certain level of Flow monitoring activity specified by a Flow Export Rate lower than the Flow Monitoring Throughput c. At the maximum level of Flow monitoring performance, e.g. using traffic conditions representing a measurement of Flow Monitoring Throughput The above mentioned measurement mode in point a. represents an ordinary Throughput measurement specified in RFC2544. The details how to setup the measurements in points b. and c. are given in section 6. 4. Measurement Set Up This section concentrates on the set-up of all components necessary to perform Flow monitoring performance measurement. The recommended reporting format can be found in Appendix A. 4.1 Measurement Topology The measurement topology described in this section is applicable only to the measurements with packet forwarding network devices. The possible architectures and implementation of the traffic monitoring appliances (see section 3.2) are too various to be covered in this document. Instead of the Forwarding Plane, these appliances generally have some kind of feed (an optical splitter, an interface sniffing traffic on a shared media or an internal channel on the DUT providing Novak Expires July, 2012 [Page 9] Internet-Draft Flow Monitoring Benchmarking January 2012 a copy of the traffic) providing the information about the traffic necessary for Flow monitoring analysis. The measurement topology then needs to be adjusted to the appliance architecture, and MUST be part of the measurement report. The measurement set-up is identical to that used by [RFC2544], with the addition of a Collector to analyze the Flow Export(see figure 2). In the measurement topology with unidirectional traffic, the traffic is transmitted from the sender to the receiver through the DUT. The received traffic is analyzed to check it is identical to the generated traffic. The ideal way to implement the measurement is by using a single device to provide the sender and receiver capabilities with a sending port and a receiving port. This allows for an easy check whether all the traffic sent by the sender was re-transmitted by the DUT and received at the receiver. +-----------+ | | | Collector | | | |Flow Record| | analysis | | | +-----------+ ^ | Flow Export | | Export Interface +--------+ +-------------+ +----------+ | | | | | traffic | | traffic| (*)| | | receiver | | sender |-------->| DUT |--------->| | | | | | | traffic | | | | | | analysis | +--------+ +-------------+ +----------+ Figure 2 Measurement topology with unidirectional traffic The DUT's export interface (connecting the Collector) MUST NOT be used for forwarding the test traffic but only for the Flow Export data containing the Flow Records. In all measurements, the export interface MUST have enough bandwidth to transmit Flow Export data without congestion. In other words, the export interface MUST NOT be a bottleneck during the measurement. The traffic receiver MUST have sufficient resources to measure all test traffic transferred successfully by the DUT, and this may be checked through measurements with and without the DUT. Note that more complex topologies might be required. For example, if Novak Expires July, 2012 [Page 10] Internet-Draft Flow Monitoring Benchmarking January 2012 the effects of enabling Flow monitoring on several interfaces are of concern or the media maximum speed is less than the DUT throughput, the topology can be expanded with several input and output ports. However, the topology MUST be clearly written in the measurement report. 4.2 Baseline DUT Set Up The baseline DUT set-up and the way the set-up is reported in the measurement results is fully specified in section 7 of [RFC2544]. The baseline DUT configuration might include other features like packet filters or quality of service on the input and/or output interfaces if there is the need to study Flow monitoring in the presence of those features. The Flow monitoring measurement procedures do not change in this case. Consideration needs to be made when evaluating measurement results to take into account the possible change of packet rates offered to the DUT and Flow monitoring after application of the features to the configuration. Any such feature configuration MUST be part of the measurement report. The DUT export interface (see figure 2) SHOULD be configured with sufficient output buffers to avoid dropping the Flow Export data due to a simple lack of resources in the interface hardware. The applied configuration MUST be part of the measurement report. The test designer has the freedom to run tests in multiple configurations. It is therefore possible to run both laboratory and real deployment configurations, according to the needs of the tester. All configurations MUST be fully documented. 4.3 Flow Monitoring Configuration This section covers all the aspects of the Flow monitoring configuration necessary on the DUT in order to perform the Flow monitoring performance measurement. The necessary configuration has a number of components (see [RFC5470]), namely Observation Points, Metering Process and Exporting Process as detailed below. The DUT MUST support the Flow monitoring architecture as specified by [RFC5470]. The DUT SHOULD support IPFIX [RFC5101] to allow meaningful results comparison due to the standard export protocol The DUT configuration and any existing Cache MUST be erased before application of any new configuration for the currently executed measurement. 4.3.1 Observation Points The Observation Points specify the interfaces and direction where the Flow monitoring traffic analysis is to be performed. Novak Expires July, 2012 [Page 11] Internet-Draft Flow Monitoring Benchmarking January 2012 The (*) in Figure 2 designates the Observation Points in the default configuration. Other DUT Observation Points might be configured depending on the specific measurement needs as follows: a. ingress port/ports(s) only b. egress port(s) /ports only c. both ingress and egress Generally, the placement of Observation Points depends upon the position of the DUT in the deployed network and the purpose of Flow monitoring. See [RFC3917] for detailed discussion. The measurement procedures are otherwise the same for all these possible configurations. In the case when both ingress and egress Flow monitoring is enabled on one DUT the results analysis needs to take into account that each Flow will be represented in the DUT Cache by two Flow Records (one for each direction) and therefore also the Flow Export will contain those two Flow Records. If more than one Observation Point for one direction is defined on the DUT the traffic passing through each of the Observation Points MUST be configured in such a way that it creates Flows and Flow Records which do not overlap, e.g. each packet (or set of packets if measuring with more than one packet per Flow - see section 6.4) sent to the DUT on different ports still creates one unique Flow Record. The specific Observation Points and associated monitoring direction MUST be included as part of the report of the results. 4.3.2 Metering Process The Metering Process MUST be enabled in order to create the Cache in the DUT and configure the Cache related parameters. The Cache Size available to the DUT MUST be known and taken into account when designing the measurement as specified in section 5. The configuration of the Metering Process MUST be recorded. For example, when a Flow monitoring implementation uses timeouts to expire entries from the Cache, the Cache's Inactive and Active Timeouts MUST be known and taken into account when designing the measurement as specified in section 5. If the Flow monitoring implementation allows only timeouts equal to zero (e.g. immediate timeout or non-existent Cache) then the measurement conditions in section 5 are fulfilled inherently without any additional configuration. The DUT simply exports information about every packet immediately, subject to the flow Export Rate definition in section 2.2.5 and the assumptions about sampling in section 4.5. If the Flow monitoring implementation allows configuration of multiple Metering Processes on a single DUT, the exact Novak Expires July, 2012 [Page 12] Internet-Draft Flow Monitoring Benchmarking January 2012 configuration of each process MUST be included in the results report. Only measurements with the same number of Metering Processes can be compared. The Cache Size, the Inactive and Active Timeouts MUST be included as part of the results report. 4.3.3 Exporting Process The Exporting Process MUST be configured in order to export the Flow Record data to the Collector. The Exporting Process MUST be configured in such a way that all Flow Records from all configured Observation Points are exported towards the Collector, after the expiration policy composed of the Inactive and Active Timeouts and Cache Size. The Exporting Process SHOULD be configured with IPFIX [RFC5101] as the protocol to use to format the Flow Export data. If the Flow monitoring implementation does not support IPFIX, proprietary protocols MAY be used. Only measurements with same export protocol SHOULD be compared since the protocols may differ in their export efficiency. The export efficiency might also be influenced by used template layout and ordering of the individual export fields within the template. The templates used by the tested implementations SHOULD be analysed and reported as part of the test report. Ideally only tests with same templates layout should be compared. Various Flow monitoring implementations might use different default values regarding the export of Control Information [RFC5470] and therefore Flow Export corresponding to Control Information SHOULD be analyzed and reported as a separate item on the measurement report. Preferably, the export of Control Information SHOULD always be configured consistently across all testing and configured to the minimal possible value - ideally just one exported set of Control Information during each measurement. Note that Control Information includes IPFIX Options and Templates [RFC5101]. Section 10 of [RFC5101] and section 8.1 of [RFC5470] discuss the possibility of deploying various transport layer protocols to deliver Flow Export data from the DUT to the Collector. The selected protocol MUST be included in the measurement report. Only benchmarks with the same transport layer protocol should be compared. If the Flow monitoring implementation allows the use of multiple the transport layer protocols, each of the protocols SHOULD be measured in a separate measurement run and the results reported independently in the report. If a reliable transport protocol is used for the transmission of the Flow Export data from the DUT, the configuration of the Transport session MUST allow for non-blocking data transmission. Novak Expires July, 2012 [Page 13] Internet-Draft Flow Monitoring Benchmarking January 2012 An example of parameters to look at would be TCP window size and maximum segment size (MSS). The most substantial transport layer parameters should be included in the report. 4.3.4 Flow Records A Flow Record contains information about a specific Flow that was observed at an Observation Point. A Flow Record contains measured properties of the Flow (e.g., the total number of bytes for all the Flow's packets) and usually characteristic properties of the Flow (e.g., source IP address). The Flow Record definition is implementation specific. A Flow monitoring implementation might allow for only a fixed Flow Record definition, based on the most common IP parameters in the IPv4 or IPv6 headers - for example source and destination IP addresses, IP protocol numbers or transport level port numbers. Another implementation might allow the user to define their own arbitrary Flow Record to monitor the traffic. The requirement for the measurements defined in this document is only the need for a large number of Cache entries in the Cache. The Flow Keys needed to achieve that will typically be source and destination IP addresses and transport level port numbers. The recommended full IPv4, IPv6 or MPLS Flow Record is shown below: Flow Keys: Source IP address Destination IP address MPLS label (for MPLS traffic type only) Transport layer source port Transport layer destination port IP protocol number (IPv6 next header) IP type of service (IPv6 traffic class) Other fields: Packet counter Byte counter Table 1: Recommended Configuration If the Flow monitoring allows for user defined Flow Records, the minimal Flow Record configurations allowing large numbers of Cache entries for example are: Flow Keys: Source IP address Destination IP address Other fields: Packet counter Novak Expires July, 2012 [Page 14] Internet-Draft Flow Monitoring Benchmarking January 2012 or: Flow Key fields Transport layer source port Transport layer destination port Other fields Packet counter Table 2: User-defined Configuration The Flow Record configuration MUST be clearly noted in the measurement report. The Flow Monitoring Throughput measurements on different DUTs or different Flow monitoring implementations MUST be compared only for exactly the same Flow Record configuration. 4.3.5 Flow Monitoring With Multiple Configurations The Flow monitoring architecture as specified in [RFC5470] allows for more complicated configurations with multiple Metering and Exporting Processes on a single DUT. Depending on the particular Flow monitoring implementation it might affect the measured DUT performance. The test report should therefore contain information containing how many Metering and Exporting processes were configured on the DUT for the selected Observation Points. The examples of such possible configurations are: a. Several Observation Points with a single Metering Process and a single Exporting Process b. Several Observation Points, each with one Metering Process but all using just one instance of Exporting Process c. Several Observation Points with per Observation Point Metering Process and Exporting Process 4.3.6 MPLS Measurement Specifics The Flow Record configuration for measurements with MPLS encapsulated traffic SHOULD contain the MPLS label. The tester SHOULD ensure that the data received by the Collector contains the expected MPLS labels. The MPLS forwarding performance document [RFC5695] specifies a number of possible MPLS label operations to test. The Observation Points MUST be placed on all the DUT test interfaces where the particular MPLS label operation takes place. The performance measurements SHOULD be performed with only one MPLS label operation at the time. The DUT MUST be configured in such a way that all the traffic is subject to the measured MPLS label operation. Novak Expires July, 2012 [Page 15] Internet-Draft Flow Monitoring Benchmarking January 2012 4.4 Collector The Collector is needed in order to capture the Flow Export data which allows the Flow Monitoring Throughput to be measured. The Collector can be used as exclusively capture device providing just hexadecimal format of the Flow Export data. In such a case it does not need to have any additional Flow Export decoding capabilities and all the decoding is done off line. However if the Collector is also used to decode the Flow Export data then it SHOULD support IPFIX [RFC5101] for meaningful results analysis. If proprietary Flow Export is deployed, the Collector MUST support it otherwise the Flow Export data analysis is not possible. The Collector MUST be capable of capturing at the full rate the export packets sent from the DUT without losing any of them. In the case of the use of reliable transport protocols (see also section 4.3.3) to transmit Flow Export data, the Collector MUST have sufficient resources to guarantee non-blocking data transmission on the transport layer session. During the analysis, the Flow Export data needs to be decoded and the received Flow Records counted. The capture buffer MUST be cleared at the beginning of each measurement. 4.5 Sampling Packet sampling and flow sampling is out of scope of this document. This document applies to situations without packet, flow, or export sampling. 4.6 Frame Formats Flow monitoring itself is not dependent in any way on the media used on the input and output ports. Any media can be used as supported by the DUT and the test equipment. At the time of writing the most common transmission media and corresponding frame formats (Ethernet, Packet over SONET) for IPv4, IPv6 and MPLS traffic are specified within [RFC2544], [RFC5180] and [RFC5695]. The presented frame formats MUST be recorded in the report. 4.7 Frame Sizes Frame sizes of the traffic to be analyzed by the DUT are specified in [RFC2544] section 9 for Ethernet type interfaces (64, 128, 256, 1024, 1280, 1518 bytes) and in [RFC5180] section 5 for Packet over SONET interfaces (47, 64, 128, 256, 1024, 1280, 1518, 2048, 4096 bytes). Novak Expires July, 2012 [Page 16] Internet-Draft Flow Monitoring Benchmarking January 2012 When measuring with large frame sizes, care needs to be taken to avoid any packet fragmentation on the DUT interfaces which could negatively affect measured performance values. The presented frame sizes MUST be recorded in the report. 4.8 Flow Export Data Packet Sizes The Flow monitoring performance will be affected by the packet size the particular implementation uses to transmit Flow Export data to the Collector. The used packet size SHOULD be part of the test report and only measurements with same packet sizes SHOULD be compared. The DUT export interface (see figure 2) maximum transmission unit (MTU) SHOULD be configured to the largest available value for the media. The MTU MUST be recorded in the report. 4.9 Illustrative Test Set-up Examples The below examples represent a hypothetical test set-up to clarify the use of Flow monitoring parameters and configuration, together with traffic parameters to test Flow monitoring. The actual benchmarking specifications are in sections 5 and 6. 4.9.1 Example 1 - Inactive Timeout Flow Expiration The traffic generator sends 1000 packets per second in 10000 defined streams, each stream identified by an unique destination IP address. Therefore each stream has a packet rate of 0.1 packets per second. The packets are sent in a round robin fashion (stream 1 to 10000) while incrementing the destination IP address for each sent packet. The configured Cache Size is 20000 Flow Records. The configured Active Timeout is 100 seconds, the Inactive Timeout is 5 seconds. Flow monitoring on the DUT uses the destination IP address as the Flow Key. A packet with destination IP address equal to A is sent every 10 seconds, so the Cache entry would be refreshed in the Cache every 10 seconds. However, the Inactive Timeout is 5 seconds, so the Cache entries will expire from the Cache due to the Inactive Timeout and when a new packet is sent with the same IP address A it will create a new entry in the Cache. This behaviour depends upon the design an efficiency of the cache ager, and incidences of multi-packet flows observed during this test should be noted. The measured Flow Export Rate in this case will be 1000 Flow Records per second since every single sent packet will always create a new Cache entry and we send 1000 packets per second. The expected number of Cache entries in the Cache during the whole Novak Expires July, 2012 [Page 17] Internet-Draft Flow Monitoring Benchmarking January 2012 measurement is around 5000. It corresponds to the Inactive Timeout being 5 seconds and during those five seconds 5000 entries are created. This expectation might change in real measurement set-ups with large Cache Sizes and high packet rate where the DUT's actual export rate might be limited and lower than the Flow Expiration activity caused by the traffic offered to the DUT. This behaviour is entirely implementation specific. 4.9.2 Example 2 - Active Timeout Flow Expiration The traffic generator sends 1000 packets per second in 100 defined streams, each stream identified by an unique destination IP address. So each stream has a packet rate of 10 packets per second. The packets are sent in a round robin fashion (stream 1 to 100) while incrementing the destination IP address for each sent packet. The configured Cache Size is 1000 Flow Records. The configured Active Timeout is 100 seconds. The Inactive Timeout is 10 seconds. Flow monitoring on the DUT uses the destination IP address as the Flow Key. After the first 100 packets are sent, 100 Cache entries will have been created in the Flow monitoring Cache. The subsequent packets will be counted against the already created Cache entries since the destination IP address (Flow Key) has already been seen by the DUT (provided the Cache entries did not expire yet as described below). A packet with destination IP address equal to A is sent every 0.1 second, so the Cache entry is refreshed in the Cache every 0.1 second, while the Inactive Timeout is 10 seconds. In this case the Cache entries will not expire until the Active Timeout, e.g. they will expire every 100 seconds and then the Cache entries will be created again. If the test measurement time is 50 seconds from the start of the traffic generator then the measured Flow Export Rate is 0 since during this period nothing expired from the Cache. If the test measurement time is 100 seconds from the start of the traffic generator then the measured Flow Export Rate is 1 Flow Record per second. If the test measurement time is 290 seconds from the start of the traffic generator then the measured Flow Export Rate is 2/3 of Flow Record per second since during the 290 seconds period we expired the same 100 of Flows twice. 5. Flow Monitoring Throughput Measurement Methodology Objective: To measure the Flow monitoring performance in a manner comparable between different Flow monitoring implementations. Novak Expires July, 2012 [Page 18] Internet-Draft Flow Monitoring Benchmarking January 2012 Metric definition: Flow Monitoring Throughput - see section 3. Discussion: Different Flow monitoring implementations might chose to handle Flow Export from a partially empty Cache differently than in the case when the Cache fully occupied. Similarly software and hardware based DUTs can handle the same situation as stated above differently. The purpose of the benchmark measurement in this section is to abstract from all the possible behaviours and define one measurement procedure covering all the possibilities. The only criteria is to measure as defined here until Flow Record or packet losses are seen. The decision whether to dive deeper into the conditions under which the packet losses happen is left to the tester. 5.1 Flow Monitoring Configuration Cache Size Cache Size configuration is dictated by the expected position of the DUT in the network and by the chosen Flow Keys of the Flow Record. The number of unique Flow Keys sets that the traffic generator (sender) provides should be multiple times larger than the Cache Size, to ensure that the existing Cache entries are never updated before Flow Expiration and Flow Export. The Cache Size MUST be known in order to define the measurement circumstances properly. Inactive Timeout Inactive Timeout is set (if configurable) to the minimum possible value on the DUT. This ensures that the Cache entries are expired as soon as possible and exported out of the DUT Cache. It MUST be known in order to define the measurement circumstances completely and equally across implementations. Active Timeout Active Timeout is set (if configurable) to a value equal to or higher than the Inactive Timeout. It MUST be known in order to define the measurement circumstances completely and equally across implementations. Flow Keys Definition: The test needs large numbers of unique Cache entries to be created by incrementing values of one or several Flow Keys. The number of unique combinations of Flow Keys values SHOULD be several times larger than the DUT Cache Size. This makes sure that any incoming packet will never refresh any already existing Cache entry. The availability of Cache Size, Inactive Timeout, Active Timeout as configuration parameters is implementation specific. If the Flow monitoring implementation does not support these parameters, the test Novak Expires July, 2012 [Page 19] Internet-Draft Flow Monitoring Benchmarking January 2012 possibilities as specified by this document are restricted. Some testing might be viable if the implementation follows the [IPFIX-CONFIG] document and needs to be considered on the case by by case basis. 5.2 Traffic Configuration Traffic Generation The traffic generator needs to increment the Flow Keys values with each sent packet, this way each packet represents one Cache entry in the DUT Cache. If the test traffic rate is below the maximum media rate for the particular packet size the traffic generator MUST send the packets in equidistant time intervals. Traffic generators which do not fulfil this condition MUST NOT and cannot be used for the Flow Monitoring Throughput measurement. An example of this behaviour is if the test traffic rate is one half of the media rate and the traffic generator achieves this by sending each half of the second at the full media rate and then sending nothing for the second half of the second. In such conditions it would be impossible to distinguish if the DUT failed to handle the Flows due to the input buffers shortage during the burst or due to the limits in the Flow Monitoring performance. Measurement Duration The measurement duration (e.g. how long the test traffic is sent to the DUT) MUST be at least two times longer than the Inactive Timeout otherwise no Flow Export would be seen. The measurement duration SHOULD guarantee that the number of Cache entries created during the measurement exceeds the available Cache Size. 5.3 Cache Population The product of Inactive Timeout and the packet rate offered to the DUT (cache population) during the measurements determines the total number of Cache entries in the DUT Cache during one particular measurement (while taking into account some margin for dynamic behaviour during high DUT loads when processing the Flows). The Flow monitoring implementation might behave differently depending on the relation of cache population to the available Cache Size during the measurement. This behaviour is fully implementation specific and will also be influenced if the DUT is software based or hardware based architecture. The cache population (if it is lower or higher than the available Cache Size) during a particular benchmark measurement SHOULD be noted and mainly only measurements with same cache population SHOULD be compared. 5.4 Measurement Time Interval The measurement time interval is the time value which is used to Novak Expires July, 2012 [Page 20] Internet-Draft Flow Monitoring Benchmarking January 2012 calculate the measured Flow Export Rate from the captured Flow Export data. It is obtained as specified below. RFC2544 specifies with the precision of the packet beginning and end the time intervals to be used to measure the DUT time characteristics. In the case of a Flow Monitoring Throughput measurement the start and stop time needs to be clearly defined but the granularity of this definition can be limited to just marking the start and stop time with the start and stop of the traffic generator. This assumes that the traffic generator and DUT are collocated and the variance in transmission delay from the generator to the DUT is negligible as compared to the total time of traffic generation. The measurement start time: the time when the traffic generator is started The measurement stop time: the time when the traffic generator is stopped The measurement time interval is then calculated as the difference (stop time) - (start time) - (Inactive Timeout). This supposes that the Cache Size is large enough so that the time to fill it up with Cache entries is longer than Inactive Timeout. Otherwise the time to fill up the Cache needs to be used for calculation of the measurement time interval in the place of the Inactive Timeout. Instead of measuring the absolute values of stop and start time it is possible to setup the traffic generator to send traffic for a certain pre-defined time interval which is then used in the above definition instead of the difference (stop time) - (start time). The Collector MUST stop collecting the Flow Export data at the measurement stop time. The Inactive Timeout (or the time needed to fill up the Cache) causes delay of the Flow Export data behind the test traffic which is analysed by the DUT. E.g. if the traffic starts at time point X Flow Export will start only at the time point X + Inactive Timeout (or X + time to fill up the Cache). Since Flow Export capture needs to stop with the traffic (because that's when the DUT stops processing the Flows at the given rate) the time interval during which the DUT kept exporting data is shorter by the Inactive Timeout than the Time interval when the test traffic was sent from the traffic generator to the DUT. 5.5 Flow Export Rate Measurement The Flow Export Rate needs to be measured in two consequent steps. The purpose of the first step (point a. below) is to gain the actual value for the rate, the second step (point b. below) needs to be done in order to verify Flow Record drops during the measurement: Novak Expires July, 2012 [Page 21] Internet-Draft Flow Monitoring Benchmarking January 2012 a. In the first step the captured Flow Export data MUST be analyzed only for the capturing interval (measurement time interval) as specified in section 5.4. During this period the DUT is forced to process Cache entries at the rate the packets are sent. When traffic generation finishes, the behaviour when emptying the Cache is completely implementation specific and the Flow Export data from this period cannot be therefore used for the benchmarking. b. In the second step all the Flow Export data from the DUT MUST be captured in order to be capable to determine the Flow Record losses. It needs to be taken into account that especially when large Cache Sizes (in order of magnitude of hundreds of thousands of entries and higher) are in use the Flow Export can take many multiples of Inactive Timeout to empty the Cache after the measurement. This behaviour is completely implementation specific. If the Collector has the capability to redirect the Flow Export data after the measurement time interval into different capture buffer (or time stamp the received Flow Export data after that) this can be done in one step. Otherwise each Flow Monitoring Throughput measurement at certain packet rate needs to be executed twice - once to capture the Flow Export data just for the measurement time interval (to determine the actual Flow Export Rate) and second time to capture all Flow Export data in order to determine Flow Record losses at that packet rate. At the end of the measurement time interval the DUT might still be processing Cache entries which belong to the Flows expired from the Cache before the end of the interval while they will appear in an export packet sent only after the end of the measurement interval. This imprecision can be mitigated by large amounts of Flow Records used during the measurement (so that the few Flow Records in one export packet can be ignored) or by use of timestamps exported with the Flow Records. 5.6 The Measurement Procedure The measurement procedure is same as the Throughput measurement in section 26.1 of [RFC2544] for the traffic sending side. The DUT output analysis is done on the traffic generator receiving side for the test traffic the same way as for RFC2544 measurements. An additional analysis is performed using data captured by the Collector. The purpose of this analysis is to establish the value of the Flow Export Rate during the current measurement step and to verify that no Flow Records were dropped during the measurement. The procedure to measure Flow Export Rate is described in section 5.5. The Flow Export performance can be significantly affected by the way the Flow monitoring implementation formats the Flow Records into the Flow Export packets in terms of ordering and frequency of Control Information export and mainly the number of Flow Records in one Flow Export packet. The worst case scenario here is just one Flow Record in Novak Expires July, 2012 [Page 22] Internet-Draft Flow Monitoring Benchmarking January 2012 every Flow Export packet. Flow Export data should be sanity checked during the benchmark measurement for: a. the number of Flow Records per packet, by simply calculating the ratio of exported Flow Records to the number of Flow Export packets captured during the measurement (which should be available as a counter on the Collector capture buffer) b. the number Flow Records corresponding to the export of Control Information per Flow Export packet (calculated as the ratio of the total number of such Flow Records in the Flow Export data and the number of Flow Export packets). 6. RFC2544 Measurements RFC2544 measurements can be performed under two Flow Monitoring set- ups (see also section 3.4.2). This section details both of them and specifies ways to construct the test traffic so that RFC2544 measurements can be performed in a controlled environment from the Flow monitoring point of view. A controlled Flow monitoring environment means that the tester always knows what Flow monitoring activity (Flow Export Rate) the traffic offered to the DUT causes. This section is applicable mainly for the RFC2544 throughput (RFC2544 section 26.1) and latency (RFC2544 section 26.2 ) measurements. It could be used also to measure frame loss rate (RFC2544 section 26.3) and back-to-back frames (RFC2544 section 26.4). It is not relevant for the rest of RFC2544 network interconnect devices characteristics. Objective: Provide RFC2544 network device characteristics in the presence of Flow monitoring on the DUT. RFC2544 studies numerous characteristics of network devices. The DUT forwarding and time characteristics without Flow monitoring present on the DUT can vary significantly when Flow monitoring is deployed on the network device. Metric definition: Metric as specified in [RFC2544]. The measured RFC2544 Throughput MUST NOT include the packet rate corresponding to the Flow Export data, because it is control type traffic, generated by the DUT as a result of enabling Flow monitoring and does not contribute to the test traffic which the DUT can handle. It requires DUT resources to be generated and transmitted and therefore the RFC2544 Throughput in most cases will be much lower when Flow monitoring is enabled on the DUT than without it. Novak Expires July, 2012 [Page 23] Internet-Draft Flow Monitoring Benchmarking January 2012 6.1 Flow Monitoring Configuration Flow monitoring configuration (as detailed in section 4.3) needs to be applied the same way as discussed in section 5 with the exception of the Active Timeout configuration. The Active Timeout SHOULD be configured to exceed several times the measurement time interval (see section 5.4). This makes sure that if measurements with two traffic components are performed (see section 6.5) there is no Flow monitoring activity related to the second traffic component. The Flow monitoring configuration does not change in any other way for the measurement performed in this section. What changes and makes the difference is the traffic configurations as specified in the sections below. 6.2 Measurements with the Flow Monitoring Throughput Set-up The major requirement to perform a measurement with Flow Monitoring Throughput set-up is that the traffic and Flow monitoring is configured in such a way that each sent packet creates one entry in the DUT Cache. This restricts the possible set-ups only to the measurement with two traffic components as specified in section 6.5. 6.3 Measurements With Fixed Flow Export Rate This section covers the measurements where the RFC2544 metrics need to be measured with Flow monitoring enabled but at certain Flow Export Rate lower than Flow Monitoring Throughput. The tester here has both options as specified in section 6.4 and 6.5. 6.4 Measurements With Single Traffic Component Section 12 of [RFC2544] discusses the use of protocol source and destination addresses for defined measurements. To perform all the RFC2544 type measurements with Flow monitoring enabled the defined Flow Keys SHOULD contain IP source and destination address. The RFC2544 type measurements with Flow monitoring enabled then can be executed under these additional conditions: a. the test traffic is not limited to single unique pair of source and destination addresses b. the traffic generator defines test traffic as follows: allow for a parameter to send N (where N is an integer number starting at 1 and incremented in small steps) packets with source IP address A and destination IP address B before changing both IP addresses to the next value Novak Expires July, 2012 [Page 24] Internet-Draft Flow Monitoring Benchmarking January 2012 This test traffic definition allows execution of the Flow monitoring measurements with fixed Flow Export Rate while measuring the DUT RFC2544 characteristics. This set-up is the better option since it best simulates the live network traffic scenario with Flows containing more than just one packet. The initial packet rate at N equal to 1 defines the Flow Export Rate for the whole measurement procedure. Subsequent increases of N will not change the Flow Export Rate as the time and Cache characteristics of the test traffic stay the same. This set-up is suitable for measurements with Flow Export Rates below the Flow Monitoring Throughput. 6.5 Measurements With Two Traffic Components The test traffic set-up in section 6.4 might be difficult to achieve with commercial traffic generators or the granularity of the traffic rates as defined by the initial packet rate at N equal to 1 might not be suitable for the required measurement. An alternate mechanism is to define two traffic components in the test traffic. One to populate Flow monitoring Cache and the second one to execute the RFC2544 measurements. a. Flow monitoring test traffic component - the exact traffic definition as specified in section 5.2. b. RFC2544 Test Traffic Component - test traffic as specified by RFC2544 MUST create just one entry in the DUT Cache. In the particular set-up discussed here this would mean a traffic stream with just one pair of unique source and destination IP addresses (but could be avoided if Flow Keys were for example UDP/TCP source and destination ports and Flow Keys did not contain the addresses). The Flow monitoring traffic component will exercise the DUT in terms of Flow activity while the second traffic component will measure the RFC2544 characteristics. The measured RFC2544 Throughput is the sum of the packet rates of both traffic components. The definition of other RFC2544 metrics remains unchanged. 7. Flow Monitoring Accuracy The pure Flow Monitoring Throughput measurement in section 5 provides the capability to verify the Flow monitoring accuracy in terms of the exported Flow Record data. Since every Cache entry created in the Cache is populated by just one packet, the full set of captured data on the Collector can be parsed (e.g. providing the values of all Flow Keys and other Flow Record fields, not only the overall Flow Record count in the exported data) and each set of parameters from each Flow Record can be checked against the parameters as configured on the traffic generator and set in packets sent to the DUT. The exported Flow Record is considered accurate if: Novak Expires July, 2012 [Page 25] Internet-Draft Flow Monitoring Benchmarking January 2012 a. all the Flow Record fields are present in each exported Flow Record b. all the Flow Record fields values match the value ranges as set by the traffic generator (for example an IP address falls within the range of the IP addresses increments on the traffic generator) c. all the possible Flow Record fields values as defined at the traffic generator have been found in the captured export data on the Collector. This check needs to be offset against detected packet losses at the DUT during the measurement 8. Evaluating Flow Monitoring Applicability The measurement results as discussed in this document and obtained for certain DUTs allow for a preliminary analysis of a Flow monitoring deployment based on the traffic analysis data from the providers network. An example of such traffic analysis in the Internet is provided by [CAIDA] and the way it can be used is discussed below. The data needed to make an estimate if a certain network device can manage the particular amount of live traffic with Flow monitoring enabled is: Average packet size: 350 bytes Number of packets per IP Flow: 20 Expected data rate on the network device: 1 Gbit/s The required value needed to be known is the average number of Flows created per second in the network device: Expected packet rate Flows per second = -------------------- Packet per flow When using the example values given above, the network device would Be required to process 18 000 Flows per second. By executing the benchmarking as specified in this document a platform capable of this processing can be determined for the deployment in that particular part of the user network. It needs to be kept in mind that the above is a very rough and averaged Flow activity estimate which cannot account for traffic anomalies, for example a large number of DNS request packets which are typically small packets coming from many different sources and represent mostly just one packet per Flow. 9. Acknowledgements This work could have been performed thanks to the patience and support of Cisco Systems NetFlow development team, namely Paul Aitken, Paul Atkins and Andrew Johnson. Thanks belong to Benoit Claise for numerous detailed reviews and presentations of the document and Aamer Akhter for initiating this work. A special acknowledgment needs to go to the whole of the working group and Novak Expires July, 2012 [Page 26] Internet-Draft Flow Monitoring Benchmarking January 2012 especially to the chair Al Morton for the support and work on this draft and Paul Aitken for a very detailed technical review. 10. Security Considerations Documents of this type do not directly affect the security of the Internet or corporate networks as long as benchmarking is not performed on devices or systems connected to operating networks. Benchmarking activities as described in this memo are limited to technology characterization using controlled stimuli in a laboratory environment, with dedicated address space and the constraints specified in sections above. The benchmarking network topology will be an independent test setup and MUST NOT be connected to devices that may forward the test traffic into a production network, or misroute traffic to the test management network. Further, benchmarking is performed on a "black-box" basis, relying solely on measurements observable external to the DUT. Special capabilities SHOULD NOT exist in the DUT specifically for benchmarking purposes. Any implications for network security arising from the DUT SHOULD be identical in the lab and in production networks. 11. IANA Considerations This memo makes no requests of IANA. 12. References 12.1. Normative References [RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, April 1997 [RFC2544] Bradner, S., "Benchmarking Methodology for Network Interconnect Devices", Informational, RFC 2544, April 1999 12.2. Informative References [RFC1242] Bradner, S., "Benchmarking Terminology for Network Interconnection Devices", RFC 1242, July 1991 [RFC2285] Mandeville R., "Benchmarking Terminology for LAN Switching Devices", Informational, RFC 2285, November 1998 [RFC3031] E. Rosen, A. Viswanathan, R. Callon, "Multiprotocol Label Switching Architecture", Standards Track, RFC 3031, January 2001 Novak Expires July, 2012 [Page 27] Internet-Draft Flow Monitoring Benchmarking January 2012 [RFC3917] Quittek J., "Requirements for IP Flow Information Export (IPFIX)", Informational, RFC 3917, October 2004. [RFC5101] Claise B., "Specification of the IP Flow Information Export (IPFIX) Protocol for the Exchange of IP Traffic Flow Information", Standards Track, RFC 5101, January 2008 [RFC5180] C. Popoviciu, A. Hamza, D. Dugatkin, G. Van de Velde, "IPv6 Benchmarking Methodology for Network Interconnect Devices", Informational, RFC 5180, May 2008 [RFC5470] Sadasivan, G., Brownlee, N., Claise, B., and J. Quittek, "Architecture Model for IP Flow Information Export", RFC 5470, October 2011 [RFC5695] Akhter A. "MPLS Forwarding Benchmarking Methodology", RFC 5695, November 2009 [CAIDA] Claffy, K., "The nature of the beast: recent traffic measurements from an Internet backbone", http://www.caida.org/publications/papers/1998/Inet98/ Inet98.html [IPFIX-CONFIG] Configuration Data Model for IPFIX and PSAMP, G. Muenz et al, Work in Progress, draft-ietf-ipfix-configuration-model-10 Author's Addresses Jan Novak (editor) Cisco Systems Edinburgh, United Kingdom Email: janovak@cisco.com Novak Expires July, 2012 [Page 28] Internet-Draft Flow Monitoring Benchmarking January 2012 Appendix A: Recommended Report Format Parameter Units ----------------------------------- ------------------------------------ Test Case test case name (section 5 and 6) Test Topology Figure 2, other Traffic Type IPv4, IPv6, MPLS, other Test Results Flow Monitoring Throughput Flow Records per second or Not Applicable Flow Export Rate Flow Records per second or Not Applicable Control Information Export Rate Flow Records per second RFC2544 Throughput packets per second (Other RFC2544 Metrics) (as appropriate) General Parameters Traffic Direction unidirectional, bidirectional DUT Interface Type Ethernet, POS, ATM, other DUT Interface Bandwidth MegaBits per second Traffic Specifications Number of Traffic Components (see section 6.4 and 6.5) For each traffic component: Packet Size bytes Traffic Packet Rate packets per second Traffic Bit Rate MegaBits per second Number of Packets Sent number of entries Incremented Packet Header Fields list of fields Number of Unique Header Values number of entries Number of Packets per Flow number of entries Flow monitoring Specifications Direction ingress, egress, both Observation Points DUT interface names Cache Size number of entries Active Timeout seconds Inactive Timeout seconds Flow Keys list of fields Flow Record Fields total number of fields Number of Flows Created number of entries Flow Export Transport Protocol UDP, TCP, SCTP, other Flow Export Protocol IPFIX, NetFlow, other Flow Export data packet size bytes MPLS Specifications (for traffic type MPLS only) Tested Label Operation imposition, swap, disposition Novak Expires July, 2012 [Page 29] Internet-Draft Flow Monitoring Benchmarking January 2012 Appendix B: Miscellaneous Tests This section lists the tests which could be useful to asses a proper Flow monitoring operation under various operational or stress conditions. These tests are not deemed suitable for any benchmarking for various reasons. B.1 DUT Under Traffic Load The Flow Monitoring Throughput SHOULD be measured under different levels of static traffic load through the DUT. This can be achieved only by using two traffic components as discussed in section 6.5, where one traffic component exercises the Flow Monitoring Plane and the second traffic component loads only the Forwarding Plane without affecting Flow monitoring (e.g. it creates just a certain amount of permanent Cache entries). The variance in Flow Monitoring Throughput as function of the traffic load should be noted for comparison purposes between two DUTs of similar architecture and capability. B.2 In-band Flow Export The test topology in section 4.1 mandates the use of separate Flow Export interface to avoid the Flow Export data generated by the DUT to mix with the test traffic from the traffic generator. This is necessary in order to create clear and reproducible test conditions for the benchmark measurement. The real network deployment of Flow monitoring might not allow for such a luxury - for example on a very geographically large network. In such a case, Flow Export will use an ordinary traffic forwarding interface e.g. in-band Flow Export. The Flow monitoring operation should be verified with in-band Flow Export configuration while following these test steps: a. Perform benchmark test as specified in section 5 b. One of the results will be how much bandwidth Flow Export used on the dedicated Flow Export interface c. Change Flow Export configuration to use the test interface d. Repeat the benchmark test while the receiver filters out the Flow Export data from analysis The expected result is that the RFC2544 Throughput achieved in step a. is same as the Throughput achieved in step d. provided that the bandwidth of the output DUT interface is not the bottleneck (in other words it must have enough capacity to forward both test and Flow Export traffic). B.3 Variable Packet Size The Flow monitoring measurements specified in this document would be interesting to repeat with variable packet sizes within one Novak Expires July, 2012 [Page 30] Internet-Draft Flow Monitoring Benchmarking January 2012 particular test (e.g. test traffic containing mix of packet sizes). The packet forwarding tests specified mainly in [RFC2544] do not recommend and perform such tests. Flow monitoring is not dependent on packet sizes so such a test could be performed during the Flow Monitoring Throughput measurement and verify its value does not depend on the offered traffic packet sizes. The tests must be carefully designed in order to avoid measurement errors due to the physical bandwidth limitations and changes of the base forwarding performance with packet size. B.4 Bursty Traffic RFC2544 section 21 discusses and defines the use of bursty traffic. It can be used for Flow monitoring testing as well to gauge some short term overload DUT capabilities in terms of Flow monitoring. The tests benchmark here would not be the Flow Export Rate the DUT can sustain but the absolute number of Flow Records the DUT can process without dropping any single Flow Record. The traffic set-up to be used for this test is as follows: a. each sent packet creates a new Cache entry b. the packet rate is set to the maximum transmission speed of the DUT interface used for the test B.5 Various Flow Monitoring Configurations This section translates the terminology used in the IPFIX documents [RFC5470], [RFC5101] and others into the terminology used in this document. Section B.5.2 proposes another measurement which is not possible to verify in a black box test manner. B.5.1 RFC2544 Throughput without Metering Process If Metering Process is not defined on the DUT it means no Flow monitoring Cache exists and no Flow analysis occurs. The performance measurement of the DUT in such a case is just pure [RFC2544] measurement. B.5.2 RFC2544 Throughput with Metering Process If only Metering Process is enabled it means that Flow analysis on the DUT is enabled and operational but no Flow Export happens. The performance measurement of a DUT in such a configuration represents an useful test of the DUT capabilities (this corresponds to the case when the network operator uses Flow monitoring for example for manual denial of service attacks detection and does not wish to use Flow Export). The performance testing on this DUT can be performed as discussed in this document but it is not possible to verify the operation and results without interrogating the DUT. Novak Expires July, 2012 [Page 31] Internet-Draft Flow Monitoring Benchmarking January 2012 B.5.3 RFC2544 Throughput with Metering and Exporting Process This test represents the performance testing as discussed in section 6. B.6 Tests With Bidirectional Traffic The test topology on figure 2 can be expanded to verify Flow monitoring functionality with bidirectional traffic in two possible ways: a. use two sets of interfaces, one for Flow monitoring for ingress traffic and one for Flow monitoring egress traffic b. use exactly same set-up as in figure 2 but use the interfaces in full duplex mode e.g. sending and receiving simultaneously on each of them The set-up in point a. above is in fact equivalent to the set-up with several Observation Points as already discussed in section 4.1 and 4.3.1. For the set-up in point b. same rules should be applied (as per section 4.1 and 4.3.1) - traffic passing through each Observation Point SHOULD always create a new Cache entry in the Cache e.g. the same traffic SHOULD NOT be just looped back on the receiving interfaces to create the bidirectional traffic flow. B.7 Instantaneous Flow Export Rate An additional useful information when analysing the Flow Export data is the time distribution of the instantaneous Flow Export Rate. It can be derived during the measurements in two ways: a. The Collector might provide the capability to decode Flow Export during capturing and at the same time counting the Flow Records and provide the instantaneous (or simply an average over shorter time interval than specified in section 5.4) Flow Export Rate b. The Flow Export protocol (like IPFIX [RFC5101]) can provide time stamps in the Flow Export packets which would allow time based analysis and calculate the Flow Export Rate as an average over much shorter time interval than specified in section 5.4 The accuracy and shortest time average will always be limited by the precision of the time stamps (1 second for IPFIX) or by the capabilities of the DUT and the Collector. Novak Expires July, 2012 [Page 32] Internet-Draft Flow Monitoring Benchmarking January 2012