Enhancements to P4TG: Protocols, Performance, and Automation
Abstract
P4TG is a hardware-based traffic generator (TG) running on the Intel Tofino 1 ASIC and was programmed using the programming language P4. In its initial version, P4TG could generate up to 10x100 Gb/s of traffic and directly measure rates, packet loss, and other metrics in the data plane. Many researchers and industrial partners requested new features to be incorporated into P4TG since its publication in 2023. With the recently added features, P4TG supports the generation of packets encapsulated with a customizable VLAN, QinQ, VxLAN, MPLS, and SRv6 header. Further, generation of IPv6 traffic is added and P4TG is ported to the Intel Tofino 2 platform enabling a generation capability of up to 10x400 Gb/s. The improvement in user experience focuses on ease of operation. Features like automated ARP replies, improved visualization, report generation, and automated testing based on the IMIX distribution and RFC 2544 are added. Future work on P4TG includes NDP to facilitate IPv6 traffic, and a NETCONF integration to further ease the configuration.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2501.17127,
title = {Enhancements to P4TG: Protocols, Performance, and Automation},
author = {Fabian Ihle and Etienne Zink and Steffen Lindner and Michael Menth},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2501.17127},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
This work has been accepted at the 4th KuVS Workshop on Network Softwarization (KuVS NetSoft) under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0)