What's "TfGen"?

TfGen allows you to generate traffic on the local area network(e.g. Ethernet).

If you'd like to evaluate network performance, you need to generate traffic on the network. Until now, in this case, function of packet generation in an expensive network analyzer was used. Now, you can generate traffic easily without network analyzer using TfGen.

Features

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  • Windows GUI 32bit application
  • Using Windows Sockets library
  • TCP/IP only use.(TfGen uses UDP. Therefore at least one destination IP node is required)
  • TfGen can generate multicast traffic (Vers. 0.4 or later).
  • TfGen can generate traffic with some traffic patterns (Vers. 0.6 or later).
  • TfGen generates traffic to the destination at the rate of octet per 10mS (in "Continuous and Constant" mode).
  • For Windows platform, I recommend you to use Windows NT/2000. Of course you can use Windows 9x. But by default setting, the utilization you specified in TfGen will not match real utilization. If you need to use TfGen on Windows 9x, please try option described in below "How to use it" as workaround.
  • Lab use only. (You should not use TfGen in the network for business!)
  1. How to get it/How to install it/Requirements to distribute
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    • You can get TfGen from my web page.
    • Read installation guide in the package. In addition, you need LHA or ZIP archiver to unpacking TfGen package.
    • You can redistribute TfGen without any modification to tfgen-XX.lzh or tfgen-XX.zip. You cannot redistribute each part of TfGen package.
    • You cannot use TfGen for sale(includes bundling TfGen to other products). TfGen is a free software!
    • No warranty. The author assumes no responsibility for errors or damages on your system using TfGen.
    • You must not give others trouble using TfGen.
    • yumo@st.rim.or.jp(Katsuyuki Yumoto) has copyright for TfGen.
  2. How to use it.
    • At first, select destination IP node. Take care of destination node capacity.
    • Specify utilization in kbps.
    • Select menu File|Start then TfGen starts generating traffic. On Windows NT, you can make sure real utilization using performance monitor.
    • Select menu File|Stop then TfGen stop generating traffic.
    • If you need to use TfGen on Windows 9x, try following option.
      1. Select menu, "Option" | "Traffic Pattern".
      2. Traffic Pattern dialog will appear.
      3. In the dialog, select "Burst and Periodical" and set 10 to "Period to update utilization". Click OK.

      Traffic pattern "Burst and Periodical" means generating full bandwidth traffic every "Period to update utilization". E.g. If "Period to update utilization" is 10, TfGen generates full bandwidth traffic every 100ms(i.e. 1 = 10ms).

      Default traffic pattern "Continuous and Constant" is same as "Burst and Periodical" while "Period to update utilization" is 1. According to my testing, Win9x cannot catch up this high rate. It means Win9x's timer handling performance is not good. UDP performance is not bad.

Thank you.

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