ethr/README.md

Ethr

Ethr is a cross platform network performance measurement tool written in golang. The goal of this project is to provide a native tool for comprehensive network performance measurements of bandwidth, connections/s, packets/s, latency, loss & jitter, across multiple protocols such as TCP, UDP, HTTP, HTTPS, and across multiple platforms such as Windows, Linux and other Unix systems.

Ethr takes inspiration from existing open source network performance tools and builds upon those ideas. For Bandwidth measurement, it is similar to iPerf3, for TCP & UDP traffic. iPerf3 has many more options for doing such as throttled testing, richer feature set, while Ethr has support for multiple threads, that allows it to scale to 1024 or even higher number of connections, multiple clients communication to a single server etc. For latency measurements, it is similar to latte on Windows or sockperf on Linux.

Ethr provides more test measurements as compared to other tools, e.g. it provides measurements for bandwidth, connections/s, packets/s, latency, and TCP connection setup latency, all in a single tool. In the future, there are plans to add more features (hoping for others to contribute) as well as more protocol support to make it a comprehensive tool for network performance measurements.

Ethr is natively cross platform, thanks to golang, as compared to compiling via an abstraction layer like cygwin that may limit functionality. It hopes to unify performance measurement by combining the functionality of tools like iPerf3, ntttcp, psping, sockperf, and latte and offering a single tool across multiple platforms and multiple protocols.

Installation

Download

https://github.com/Microsoft/ethr/releases/latest

Linux

wget https://github.com/microsoft/ethr/releases/latest/download/ethr_linux.zip
unzip ethr_linux.zip

Windows Powershell

wget https://github.com/microsoft/ethr/releases/latest/download/ethr_windows.zip -OutFile ethr_windows.zip
Expand-Archive .\ethr_windows.zip -DestinationPath .

OSX

wget https://github.com/microsoft/ethr/releases/latest/download/ethr_osx.zip
unzip ethr_osx.zip

Building from Source

Note: go version 1.11 or higher is required building it from the source.

We use go-module to manage Ethr dependencies. for more information please check how to use go-modules!

git clone https://github.com/Microsoft/ethr.git
cd ethr
go build

If ethr is cloned inside of the $GOPATH/src tree, please make sure you invoke the go command with GO111MODULE=on!

Docker

Build image using command:

docker build -t microsoft/ethr .

Make binary:

Linux

docker run -e GOOS=linux -v $(pwd):/out microsoft/ethr make build-docker

Windows

docker run -e BINARY_NAME=ethr.exe -e GOOS=windows -v $(pwd):/out microsoft/ethr make build-docker

OS X

docker run -e BINARY_NAME=ethr -e GOOS=darwin -v $(pwd):/out microsoft/ethr make build-docker

Using go get

go get github.com/Microsoft/ethr

Using ArchLinux AUR

Assuming you are using yay (https://github.com/Jguer/yay):

yay -S ethr

Publishing Nuget package

Follow the topic Building from Source to build ethr.exe

Modify ethr.nuspec to add new release version

vim ethr.nuspec

Create a nuget package(like Ethr.0.2.1.nupkg)

nuget.exe pack ethr.nuspec

Upload the package to nuget.org.

Usage

Simple Usage

Help:

ethr -h

Server:

ethr -s

Server with Text UI:

ethr -s -ui

Client:

ethr -c <server ip>

Examples:

// Start server
ethr -s

// Start client for default (bandwidth) test measurement using 1 thread
ethr -c localhost

// Start bandwidth test using 8 threads
ethr -c localhost -n 8

// Start connections/s test using 64 threads to server 10.1.0.11
ethr -c 10.1.0.11 -t c -n 64

// Measure TCP connection setup latency to www.github.com at port 443
./ethr -c www.github.com:443 -p tcp -t pi -m x -d 0 -4

// Measure TCP connection setup latency to www.github.com at port 443
// Note: Here port 443 is driven automatically from https
./ethr -c https://www.github.com -p tcp -t pi -m x -d 0 -4

// Measure ICMP ping latency to www.github.com
sudo ./ethr -c www.github.com -p icmp -t pi -m x -d 0 -4

// Run measurement similar to mtr on Linux
sudo ./ethr -c www.github.com -p icmp -t mtr -m x -d 0 -4

// Measure packets/s over UDP by sending small 1-byte packets
./ethr -c 172.28.192.1 -p udp -t p -d 0

Known Issues & Requirements

Windows

For ICMP related tests, Ping, TraceRoute, MyTraceRoute, Windows requires ICMP to be allowed via Firewall. This can be done using PowerShell by following commands. However, use this only if security policy of your setup allows that.

// Allow ICMP packets via Firewall for IPv4
New-NetFirewallRule -DisplayName "ICMP_Allow_Any" -Direction Inbound -Protocol ICMPv4 -IcmpType Any -Action Allow  -Profile Any -RemotePort Any

// Allow ICMP packets via Firewall for IPv6
New-NetFirewallRule -DisplayName "ICMPV6_Allow_Any" -Direction Inbound -Protocol ICMPv6 -IcmpType Any -Action Allow  -Profile Any -RemotePort Any

In addition, for TCP based TraceRoute and MyTraceRoute, Administrator mode is required, otherwise Ethr won't be able to receive ICMP TTL exceeded messages.

Linux

For ICMP Ping, ICMP/TCP TraceRoute and MyTraceRoute, privileged mode is required via sudo.

Complete Command Line

Common Parameters

	-h 
		Help
	-no 
		Disable logging to file. Logging to file is enabled by default.
	-o <filename>
		Name of log file. By default, following file names are used:
		Server mode: 'ethrs.log'
		Client mode: 'ethrc.log'
	-debug 
		Enable debug information in logging output.
	-4 
		Use only IP v4 version
	-6 
		Use only IP v6 version

Server Parameters

In this mode, Ethr runs as a server, allowing multiple clients to run
performance tests against it.
	-s 
		Run in server mode.
	-ui 
		Show output in text UI.
	-port <number>
		Use specified port number for TCP & UDP tests.
		Default: 8888

Client Parameters

In this mode, Ethr client can only talk to an Ethr server.
	-c <server>
		Run in client mode and connect to <server>.
		Server is specified using name, FQDN or IP address.
	-d <duration>
		Duration for the test (format: <num>[ms | s | m | h]
		0: Run forever
		Default: 10s
	-g <gap>
		Time interval between successive measurements (format: <num>[ms | s | m | h]
		Only valid for latency, ping and traceRoute tests.
		0: No gap
		Default: 1s
	-i <iterations>
		Number of round trip iterations for each latency measurement.
		Only valid for latency testing.
		Default: 1000
	-l <length>
		Length of buffer to use (format: <num>[KB | MB | GB])
		Only valid for Bandwidth tests. Max 1GB.
		Default: 16KB
	-n <number>
		Number of Parallel Sessions (and Threads).
		0: Equal to number of CPUs
		Default: 1
	-p <protocol>
		Protocol ("tcp", "udp", "http", "https", or "icmp")
		Default: tcp
	-port <number>
		Use specified port number for TCP & UDP tests.
		Default: 8888
	-r 
		For Bandwidth tests, send data from server to client.
	-t <test>
		Test to run ("b", "c", "p", "l", "cl" or "tr")
		b: Bandwidth
		c: Connections/s
		p: Packets/s
		l: Latency, Loss & Jitter
		pi: Ping Loss & Latency
		tr: TraceRoute
                mtr: MyTraceRoute with Loss & Latency
		Default: b - Bandwidth measurement.
	-w <number>
		Use specified number of iterations for warmup.
		Default: 1

External Client Mode

In this mode, Ethr client can talk to a non-Ethr server. This mode only supports
few types of measurements, such as Ping, Connections/s and TraceRoute.
	-c <destination>
		Run in external client mode and connect to <destination>.
		<destination> is specified in <host:port> format for TCP and <host> format for ICMP.
		Example: For TCP - www.microsoft.com:443 or 10.1.0.4:22
		         For ICMP - www.microsoft.com or 10.1.0.4
	-m <mode>
		'-m x' MUST be specified for external mode.
	-d <duration>
		Duration for the test (format: <num>[ms | s | m | h]
		0: Run forever
		Default: 10s
	-g <gap>
		Time interval between successive measurements (format: <num>[ms | s | m | h]
		Only valid for latency, ping and traceRoute tests.
		0: No gap
		Default: 1s
	-n <number>
		Number of Parallel Sessions (and Threads).
		0: Equal to number of CPUs
		Default: 1
	-p <protocol>
		Protocol ("tcp", or "icmp")
		Default: tcp
	-t <test>
		Test to run ("c", "cl", or "tr")
		c: Connections/s
		pi: Ping Loss & Latency
		tr: TraceRoute
                mtr: MyTraceRoute with Loss & Latency
		Default: pi - Ping Loss & Latency.
	-w <number>
		Use specified number of iterations for warmup.
		Default: 1

Status

Protocol	Bandwidth	Connections/s	Packets/s	Latency	Ping	TraceRoute	MyTraceRoute
TCP	Yes	Yes	NA	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
UDP	Yes	NA	Yes	No	NA	No	No
ICMP	No	NA	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes

Platform Support

Windows

Tested: Windows 10, Windows 7 SP1

Untested: Other Windows versions

Linux

Tested: Ubuntu Linux 18.04.1 LTS, OpenSuse Leap 15

Untested: Other Linux versions

OSX

Tested: OSX is tested by contributors

Other

No other platforms are tested at this time

Todo List

Todo list work items are shown below. Contributions are most welcome for these work items or any other features and bugfixes.

• Test Ethr on other Windows versions, other Linux versions, FreeBSD and other OS
• Support for UDP bandwidth & latency testing
• Support for HTTPS bandwidth, latency, requests/s
• Support for HTTP latency and requests/s
• Support for ICMP bandwidth, latency and packets/s

Contributing

This project welcomes contributions and suggestions. Most contributions require you to agree to a Contributor License Agreement (CLA) declaring that you have the right to, and actually do, grant us the rights to use your contribution. For details, visit https://cla.microsoft.com.

When you submit a pull request, a CLA-bot will automatically determine whether you need to provide a CLA and decorate the PR appropriately (e.g., label, comment). Simply follow the instructions provided by the bot. You will only need to do this once across all repos using our CLA.

This project has adopted the Microsoft Open Source Code of Conduct. For more information see the Code of Conduct FAQ or contact opencode@microsoft.com with any additional questions or comments.