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96 lines
4.1 KiB
96 lines
4.1 KiB
Subject: iperf3 status, April 2017
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This is the first of a series of (maybe periodic?) updates about
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iperf3 development:
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State of the iperf3 World, as seen from ESnet...
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------------------------------------------------
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iperf3 was originally written to be a "better", more maintainable
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follow-on to iperf2. This was seen to be necessary to fill the
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requirements for the perfSONAR project (http://www.perfsonar.net).
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In the past few years, iperf2 development has been restarted by Bob
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McMahon of Broadcom. He (and other contributors) have fixed a number
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of problems with iperf2 and added some new features
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(https://sourceforge.net/projects/iperf2/). We're happy to observe
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that iperf2 is once again under active development, and we have
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started discussing ways in which these two projects could productively
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interact.
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We note that iperf3 lacks several features found in iperf2, for
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example multicast tests, bidirectional tests, multi-threading, and
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official Windows support. Given the active state of iperf2
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development and maintenance, we feel that the needs of users requiring
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such functionality are best met by using a recent version of iperf2
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instead of waiting for them to be backported or reimplemented in
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iperf3.
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ESnet's main interest in iperf3 is for testing high-performance
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Research and Education (R&E) networks, especially as a part of the
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perfSONAR toolkit. iperf3 can be useful in other circumstances as
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well, but high-speed R&E network performance testing will remain the
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primary use case. (Much of iperf2's recent development
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has focused on the use of UDP for end-to-end latency testing on a
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broad range of platforms, although it too is useful for many other
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testing scenarios.)
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iperf3 Support
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--------------
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We're trying to work down the support backlog for iperf3. To that
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end, we've been aggressively triaging iperf3 issues in the issue
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tracker on GitHub. Over the past several weeks, we've gone from about
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180 open issues to less than 75. A number of these issues were user
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questions, not bug reports or enhancement requests. We're now
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discouraging the use of the iperf3 issue tracker for questions.
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Instead we'd like users to either use the mailing list
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(iperf-dev@google-groups.com) or to look to various question sites on
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the Internet such as Stack Overflow (http://www.stackoverflow.com).
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We're happy to accept enhancement requests, although it should be
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noted that ESnet's time commitments to iperf3 are somewhat limited and
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we need to prioritize our work to match our own requirements. We have
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begun using the "Help Wanted" label in the issue tracker on GitHub to
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indicate requests we agree with (or at least don't object to), but
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which we don't have the time to work on ourselves. These are good
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candidates for someone in the community to work on and submit as a
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pull request.
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Pull requests are still encouraged, as long as they're compatible with
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ESnet's goals and requirements for iperf3. If you're contemplating a
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code change that would have a major, fundamental change on the iperf3
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architecture, we strongly encourage discussion with the iperf3
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maintainers before doing a significant amount of work.
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Some of the above considerations are now documented in GitHub
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templates that we've recently installed for new issues, pull requests,
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and contribution guidelines.
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To make it easier for new users with common questions, we have created
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a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) list, which is now available on the
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iperf3 Web site, at:
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http://software.es.net/iperf/faq.html
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Future Plans
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------------
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In the near-term, we're planning another iperf3 release that will
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include some recently added changes. Because some of the changes are
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rather large, we're considering basing this release off the mainline
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which would make it the first 3.2 release, rather than try to backport
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these changes and make another "bugfix" 3.1 release. No decisions
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have been made yet.
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The main changes (already on the master branch) are authentication
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(#517), a more fine-grained pacing timer (#460), and some portability
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fixes. We'd appreciate any testing and feedback that users in the
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community could give on these.
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Thanks for your interest and support of iperf3,
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Bruce Mah
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Software Engineering Group
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ESnet
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