user--level benchmarking help

[Eddie Kohler]

Hi Scott,

> Is anyone aware of a publicly available user--level benchmarking
> regimen for click?  It seems there are modules for capturing and
> feeding network traces, and interfaces for NS; but I haven't come
> across more detailed instructions/suggestions for configuration and
> measurement, and pointers to (nontrivial) sample trace files.

I don't know of a benchmarking 'regimen'. Are you thinking of doing this
for profiling, or for verifying correctness, or...?

All of the profiling/verifying we have done uses trace-reading elements,
like FromDump, FromIPSummaryDump, and FromDAGDump; traffic-generation
elements, like RandomSource and RatedSource; and DriverManager to manage
the test. Sometimes we ran single-element tests in the kernel, to take
advantage of the cycle counters; see SetCycleCount and CycleCountAccum.

As for trace files, search for "network traces" on Google and you'll get a
couple, including some Harvard traces (FromDump):
http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/net-traces/

and some CAIDA traces (FromDAGDump, I think):
http://traffic.caida.org/Traces/index.html

and some from LBL (FromDump):
http://ita.ee.lbl.gov/html/traces.html

and NLANR (may need to use the 2ascii scripts, and FromIPSummaryDump, or
modify FromDAGDump and send us the modifications!!):
http://pma.nlanr.net/PMA/

Let us know if we can help with a more specific problem!
Eddie