README rTPL Package

Description

The RTPL package (Remote Throughput, Ping Load) performs periodical network performance measurements tests between a set of workstations to view the network from a user's perspective. The performance measurements consist of round-trip and throughput measurements between a number of hosts. Optionally also UDP bandwidth kind of tests can be performed with the UDPmon package (Linux at Pentium processors only). By default all pairs in the hosts set are used, but it is also possible to skip host pairs from the tests. Also, the machine load of the participating workstations is measured. In this way performance loss can be related to heavy machine load. A remote or secure shell command is used to start the network performance measurements from a, so called, control host at each client or test host of the set. At the control host a Web based presentation of the results will be given.

The presentation of the results is Web based and dynamic: the net performance data are stored in ZIP compressed plain text files, which are accessible from a Web server. There are various files such that a user can be offered several views of the data, including several time based averages. The file data are read into the Web browser by a Java Applet. The HTML scripting language JavaScript is used to display the data in various tables. The Applet can also be used to present the data in plot form.

Installation

See the install.html file for installation instructions. There are interactive scripts for the setups at the control host and at the client hosts to guide you through the specification of the installation parameters.

Supported Platforms

The control host version of the RTPL package is only available for Unix platforms. However, the client side of the package is available for both Unix and Windows platforms. At Unix hosts, normally a secure or remote shell will be used to start from the control host the net performance tests at the client hosts. For Windows hosts a special Perl server / client combination is provided to start the net performance tests at the clients (there are secure or remote shell implementations available for Windows, but they are not very commonly used). Here the server part is running at the client hosts. It is waiting for requests from the client process, which is running at the control host, to start the net performance measurements. This server / client is also available for Unix hosts. At the Unix platform also a script has been add which checks if the server is running. It starts a server when this is not the case. Therefore, this script is suitable to be run from crontab.

At the Windows clients two servers should be run:

  1. A server which executes the net performance measurements.
  2. A server which restarts the netserver program when it did finish a throughput measurement. At the Windows platform no netserver process could be forked to start an independent process to handle a request to receive the generated traffic.

At Windows NT the SRVANY, available from the Windows NT Resource Kit, can be used to start both servers at system startup.

The threading support at Perl is not very good at the moment. However, for coming versions it is promised to be improved. Also the API will be changed. This implies that both servers are running now under Windows without Thread support. This makes them a bit sensitive to blocking during network problems.

Please note that the server, mentioned at point 1., uses at Unix fork() calls to treat the requests for performance tests at a client. Therefore, it is insensitive for network difficulties. The second server is not needed under Unix, because the netserver daemon already uses fork() calls to handle the net performance tests.

Required Software

The following software packages should be installed:

Optional Software for Unix

Optionally the following software can also be used:

Other Requirements

The requirements, listed below, should also be fulfilled to be able to run the package. In general the Unix platform is intended, when not explicitly mentioned.

Online Documentation

In the distribution root, and / or from the installed hosts set, a.o. the following online documentation is available:

Sub Items of the Installation Directory

Below a short description is given of the sub directories and files from this installation directory. During the installation most of these items will be copied to the appropriate destinations below the installed package root directory, where the appropriate setup parameters will be substituted in the installed package files.

Contact

If you encounter any problems, please contact me.

Hans Blom
jblom@science.uva.nl