Microbursts in Software and Hardware-based Traffic Load Generation

Many software based traffic load generators suffer from packet rate variation which is known as rate jitter. In this Demo, we show how this varying rate burstiness can affect the device under test even if the generated average data rate seems constant. To this end, we compare a hardware rate shaping, which is implemented using a programmable P4-switch, and a conventional software load generator and show their impact on a software device under test. The results show, that microbursts within the test load significantly impact the experiment results. Our recommendation is to benchmark the traffic load generator before conducting measurement experiments especially when the device under test is sensitive to microbursts.