Provided by: irtt_0.9.0-2_amd64 bug

NAME

       irtt - Isochronous Round-Trip Time

SYNOPSIS

       irtt command [args]

       irtt help command

DESCRIPTION

       IRTT  measures round-trip time and other latency related metrics using UDP packets sent on
       a fixed period, and produces both text and JSON output.

COMMANDS

       client runs the client

       server runs the server

       bench  runs HMAC and fill benchmarks

       clock  runs wall vs monotonic clock test

       sleep  runs sleep accuracy test

       version
              shows the version

EXAMPLES

       After installing IRTT, start a server:

              $ irtt server
              IRTT server starting...
              [ListenerStart] starting IPv6 listener on [::]:2112
              [ListenerStart] starting IPv4 listener on 0.0.0.0:2112

       While that's running, run a client.  If no options are supplied, it will  send  a  request
       once  per  second,  like  ping.   Here we simulate a one minute G.711 VoIP conversation by
       using an interval of 20ms and randomly filled payloads of 172 bytes:

              $ irtt client -i 20ms -l 172 -d 1m --fill=rand --sfill=rand -q 192.168.100.10
              [Connecting] connecting to 192.168.100.10
              [Connected] connected to 192.168.100.10:2112

                                       Min     Mean   Median      Max  Stddev
                                       ---     ----   ------      ---  ------
                              RTT  11.93ms  20.88ms   19.2ms  80.49ms  7.02ms
                       send delay   4.99ms  12.21ms  10.83ms  50.45ms  5.73ms
                    receive delay   6.38ms   8.66ms   7.86ms  69.11ms  2.89ms

                    IPDV (jitter)    782ns   4.53ms   3.39ms  64.66ms   4.2ms
                        send IPDV    256ns   3.99ms   2.98ms  35.28ms  3.69ms
                     receive IPDV    896ns   1.78ms    966µs  62.28ms  2.86ms

                   send call time   56.5µs   82.8µs           18.99ms   348µs
                      timer error       0s   21.7µs           19.05ms   356µs
                server proc. time   23.9µs   26.9µs             141µs  11.2µs

                              duration: 1m0s (wait 241.5ms)
                 packets sent/received: 2996/2979 (0.57% loss)
               server packets received: 2980/2996 (0.53%/0.03% loss up/down)
                   bytes sent/received: 515312/512388
                     send/receive rate: 68.7 Kbps / 68.4 Kbps
                         packet length: 172 bytes
                           timer stats: 4/3000 (0.13%) missed, 0.11% error

       In the results above, the client and server are located at  two  different  sites,  around
       50km  from  one  another,  each of which connects to the Internet via point-to-point WiFi.
       The client is 3km NLOS through trees located near its transmitter,  which  is  likely  the
       reason for the higher upstream packet loss, mean send delay and IPDV.

BUGS

       • Windows is unable to set DSCP values for IPv6.

       • Windows  is  unable to set the source IP address, so --set-src-ip may not be used on the
         server.

       • The server doesn't run well on 32-bit Windows platforms.  When connecting with a client,
         you  may  see  Terminated due to receive error.   To  work  around  this,  disable  dual
         timestamps from the client by including --tstamp=midpoint.

LIMITATIONS

              “It is the limitations of software that give it life.”

                     -Me, justifying my limitations

   Isochronous (fixed period) send schedule
       Currently, IRTT only sends packets on a fixed period, foregoing the  ability  to  simulate
       arbitrary traffic.  Accepting this limitation offers some benefits:

       • It's easy to implement

       • It's easy to calculate how many packets and how much data will be sent in a given time

       • It simplifies timer error compensation

       Also, isochronous packets are commonly seen in VoIP, games and some streaming media, so it
       already simulates an array of common types of traffic.

   Fixed packet lengths for a given test
       Packet lengths are fixed for the duration of the test.  While this may not be an  accurate
       simulation  of  some types of traffic, it means that IPDV measurements are accurate, where
       they wouldn't be in any other case.

   Stateful protocol
       There are numerous benefits to stateless protocols, particularly for developers  and  data
       centers,  including simplified server design, horizontal scalabity, and easily implemented
       zero-downtime restarts.  However, in this case, a  stateful  protocol  provides  important
       benefits to the user, including:

       • Smaller  packet  sizes  (a design goal) as context does not need to be included in every
         request

       • More accurate measurement of upstream vs downstream packet loss (this gets  worse  in  a
         stateless  protocol  as  RTT  approaches  the test duration, complicating interplanetary
         tests!)

       • More accurate rate and test duration limiting on the server

   In-memory results storage
       Results for each round-trip are stored in memory as the test is being  run.   Each  result
       takes 72 bytes in memory (8 64-bit timestamps and a 64-bit server received packet window),
       so this limits the  effective  duration  of  the  test,  especially  at  very  small  send
       intervals.  However, the advantages are:

       • It's  easier  to  perform statistical analysis (like calculation of the median) on fixed
         arrays than on running data values

       • We don't need to either send client timestamps  to  the  server,  or  maintain  a  local
         running window of sent packet info, because they're all in memory, no matter when server
         replies come back

       • Not accessing the disk during the test  to  write  test  output  prevents  inadvertently
         affecting the results

       • It simplifies the API

       As  a  consequence  of  storing  results  in  memory, packet sequence numbers are fixed at
       32-bits.  If all 2^32 sequence numbers were used, the results would require over 300 Gb of
       virtual  memory  to record while the test is running.  That is why 64-bit sequence numbers
       are currently unnecessary.

   64-bit received window
       In order to determine per-packet differentiation between upstream and downstream  loss,  a
       64-bit “received window” may be returned with each packet that contains the receipt status
       of the previous 64 packets.  This can be enabled using --stats=window/both with  the  irtt
       client.  Its limited width and simple bitmap format lead to some caveats:

       • Per-packet  differentiation  is  not  available (for any intervening packets) if greater
         than 64 packets are lost in succession.  These packets will be marked with  the  generic
         Lost.

       • While  any  packet  marked  LostDown  is  guaranteed  to be marked properly, there is no
         confirmation of receipt of the receive window from the client to the server, so  packets
         may  sometimes  be  erroneously  marked  LostUp, for example, if they arrive late to the
         server and slide out of the received window before they can be confirmed to the  client,
         or  if  the  received window is lost on its way to the client and not amended by a later
         packet's received window.

       There are many ways that this simple approach could be improved, such as by:

       • Allowing a wider window

       • Encoding receipt seqnos in a more intelligent way to allow a wider seqno range

       • Sending confirmation of window receipt from the client  to  the  server  and  re-sending
         unreceived windows

       However,  the  current strategy means that a good approximation of per-packet loss results
       can be obtained with only 8 additional bytes in each packet.  It also requires very little
       computational  time  on the server, and almost all computation on the client occurs during
       results generation,  after  the  test  is  complete.   It  isn't  as  accurate  with  late
       (out-of-order)  upstream  packets or with long sequences of lost packets, but high loss or
       high numbers of late packets typically indicate more severe network conditions that should
       be corrected first anyway, perhaps before per-packet results matter.  Note that in case of
       very high packet loss, the total number of packets received by the server but not returned
       to  the  client  (which  can be obtained using --stats=count) will still be correct, which
       will still provide an accurate average loss percentage in each direction over  the  course
       of the test.

   Use of Go
       IRTT is written in Go.  That carries with it:

       • Non-negligible system call overhead

       • A larger executable size than with C

       • Somewhat   slower   execution   speed   than   C   (although   not   that   much  slower
         (https://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/compare.php?lang=go&lang2=gcc))

       However, Go also has characteristics that make it a good fit for this application:

       • Go's target is network and server applications, with a focus on simplicity,  reliability
         and efficiency, which is appropriate for IRTT

       • Memory footprint tends to be significantly lower than with some interpreted languages

       • It's easy to support a broad array of hardware and OS combinations

SEE ALSO

       irtt-client(1) (irtt-client.html), irtt-server(1) (irtt-server.html)

       IRTT GitHub repository (https://github.com/peteheist/irtt/)

AUTHOR

       Pete Heist <pete@eventide.io>

       Many  thanks  to  both  Toke  Høiland-Jørgensen and Dave Täht from the Bufferbloat project
       (https://www.bufferbloat.net/) for their valuable  advice.   Any  problems  in  design  or
       implementation are entirely my own.

HISTORY

       IRTT  was  originally  written to improve the latency and packet loss measurements for the
       excellent Flent (https://flent.org) tool.  Flent was developed by and for the  Bufferbloat
       (https://www.bufferbloat.net/projects/)  project,  which aims to reduce “chaotic and laggy
       network performance,” making this project valuable to anyone who  values  their  time  and
       sanity while using the Internet.