High performance Internet traffic generators

In the networking field, traffic generator platforms are of a paramount importance. This paper deals with the description of a distributed software platform for synthetic traffic generation over IPv4/v6 networks, called D-ITG (Distributed Internet Traffic Generator). We point our attention on the original architectural choices and evaluate the performance achieved by the platform. D-ITG supports several protocols and many traffic patterns. We tested our generation platform over different scenarios and compared it to many of the currently available, and most widely adopted, traffic generators. We found that D-ITG offers enhanced functionalities and improved performance.