Elastic Compute Service:Best practices for testing network performance

Prepare the environment

In this test, ECS instances whose network performance is tested are used as test machines and auxiliary test machines. The packet forwarding rate, network bandwidth, and network latency of these ECS instances are tested. Test machines can be used as clients or servers in tests that use Netperf or sockperf. Auxiliary test machines can also be used as clients or servers in tests that use Netperf or sockperf. Test machines are connected to auxiliary test machines to transmit test configurations.

Test the packet forwarding rate

Test the network bandwidth

1. Connect to the test machine and the auxiliary test machine.

   For information about the methods for connecting to an instance, see Connection method overview.

2. Run the following command on the test machine and the auxiliary test machine to download Netperf:

   wget https://benchmark-packages.oss-cn-qingdao.aliyuncs.com/netperf-2.7.0.tar.gz

3. Run the following commands on the test machine and the auxiliary test machine to install Netperf and SAR.

   1. Run the following command to decompress the Netperf installation package:

      sudo yum install -y gcc autoconf automake libtool sysstat
      tar -zxvf netperf-2.7.0.tar.gz

   2. Run the following command to query the version number of GCC:

      gcc -v 2>&1

   3. If the version of GCC on the test machine and the auxiliary test machine are later than V10, you must perform the following operations to ensure that GCC can be compiled properly. Otherwise, ignore this step.

      1. Run the following command to modify the nettest_omni.c file:

         cd netperf
         vim src/nettest_omni.c

      2. Press the i key to enter the edit mode and manually delete the following declared variables in the nettest_omni.c file:

         /* different options for the sockets        */
         
         int
           loc_nodelay,    /* don't/do use NODELAY  locally    */
           rem_nodelay,    /* don't/do use NODELAY remotely  */
           loc_sndavoid,    /* avoid send copies locally    */
           loc_rcvavoid,    /* avoid recv copies locally    */
           rem_sndavoid,    /* avoid send copies remotely    */
           rem_rcvavoid;   /* avoid recv_copies remotely    */

      3. After you delete the previous variables, press the Esc key. Then, enter :wq and press the Enter key to save the modification and exit.

   4. Run the following command to install Netperf and SAR:

      cd netperf
      sudo ./configure
      sudo make && sudo make install

4. Run the following command on the test machine to start 64 netserver services:

   #!/bin/bash
   for j in `seq 64`; do
       netserver -p $[16000+j] > server_$[16000+j].netperf > /dev/null 2>&1  &
   done

5. Run the following command on the test machine to query the private IP address of the test machine:

   ifconfig || ip addr

   

6. Run the following command on the auxiliary test machine to send traffic to the test machine:

   #!/bin/bash
   server_ip=<Private IP address of the test machine>
   for j in `seq 64`; do
       port=$[16000+j]
       netperf -H ${server_ip} -l ${run_time:-300} -t TCP_STREAM -p $port -- -D > /dev/null 2>&1 & 
   done

   Replace <Private IP address of the test machine> with the private IP address of the test machine obtained in the previous step, as shown in the following figure.

   

7. Run the following command on the test machine to test the network bandwidth:

   sar -n DEV 1

   View the values in the rxkB/s column in the test result. The rxkB/s column shows the size of packets received by the test machine per second. Unit: KB. The packet size and bandwidth can be converted to each other by using the following formula: Bandwidth (Kbit/s) = Packet size (KB) × 8.

   The following figure shows an example.

Test the network latency

1. Connect to the test machine and the auxiliary test machine.

   For information about the methods for connecting to an instance, see Connection method overview.

2. Run the following commands on the test machine and the auxiliary test machine to install sockperf:

   sudo yum install -y autoconf automake libtool gcc-c++
   cd /opt
   sudo wget https://github.com/Mellanox/sockperf/archive/refs/tags/3.8.tar.gz
   sudo tar -zxf 3.8.tar.gz
   cd sockperf-3.8/
   sudo ./autogen.sh
   sudo ./configure
   sudo make -j `cat /proc/cpuinfo| grep process | wc -l`
   sudo make install

3. Run the following command on the test machine to query the private IP address of the test machine:

   ifconfig || ip addr

   

4. Run the following command on the test machine to start sockperf:

   sockperf sr --tcp --daemonize

5. Run the following command on the auxiliary test machine to send traffic to the test machine:

   cd
   sockperf pp -i <Private IP address of the test machine> --tcp -t 30 -m 14 --full-log=result.json

   Replace <Private IP address of the test machine> with the private IP address of the test machine obtained in the previous step.

   View the returned data, as shown in the following figure.

   • Returned data starting with avg-latency indicates the average latency in microseconds.

   • Returned data starting with percentile 99.000 indicates the 99-percentile latency in microseconds.