A tool for the generation of realistic network workload for emerging networking scenarios

Internet workload is a mix of many and complex sources. Therefore, its accurate and realistic replication is a difficult and challenging task. Such difficulties are exacerbated by the multidimensional heterogeneity and scale of the current Internet combined with its constant evolution. The study and generation of network workload is a moving target, both in terms of actors (devices, access networks, protocols, applications, services) and in terms of case studies (the interest expands from performance analysis to topics like network neutrality and security). In order to keep up with the new questions that arise and with the consequent new technical challenges, networking research needs to continuously update its tools. In this paper, we describe the main properties that a network workload generator should have today, and we present a tool for the generation of realistic network workload that can be used for the study of emerging networking scenarios. In particular, we discuss (i) how it tackles the main issues challenging the representative replication of network workload, and (ii) our design choices and its advanced features that make it suitable to analyze complex and emerging network scenarios. To highlight how our tool advances the state-of-the-art, we finally report some experimental results related to the study of hot topics like (a) broadband Internet performance and network neutrality violations: (b) RFC-based security and performance assessment of home network devices; (c) performance analysis of multimedia communications. (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.