Enhancements to P4TG: Protocols, Performance, and Automation

TL;DR

This paper presents significant enhancements to P4TG, a high-speed hardware traffic generator, including new protocol support, performance improvements, and automation features, enabling more versatile and user-friendly network testing.

Contribution

The paper introduces new protocol support, platform porting, automation, and visualization features to P4TG, significantly improving its capabilities and ease of use.

Findings

Supports up to 10x400 Gb/s traffic generation on Tofino 2

Adds support for IPv6, VLAN, QinQ, VxLAN, MPLS, SRv6 protocols

Includes automation features like ARP replies and report generation

Abstract

P4TG is a hardware-based traffic generator (TG) running on the Intel Tofino 1 ASIC and was programmed using the programming language P4. In its initial version, P4TG could generate up to 10x100 Gb/s of traffic and directly measure rates, packet loss, and other metrics in the data plane. Many researchers and industrial partners requested new features to be incorporated into P4TG since its publication in 2023. With the recently added features, P4TG supports the generation of packets encapsulated with a customizable VLAN, QinQ, VxLAN, MPLS, and SRv6 header. Further, generation of IPv6 traffic is added and P4TG is ported to the Intel Tofino 2 platform enabling a generation capability of up to 10x400 Gb/s. The improvement in user experience focuses on ease of operation. Features like automated ARP replies, improved visualization, report generation, and automated testing based on the IMIX distribution and RFC 2544 are added. Future work on P4TG includes NDP to facilitate IPv6 traffic, and a NETCONF integration to further ease the configuration.