[Make-wifi-fast] [Flent-users] Flent traffic direction convention

[Toke Høiland-Jørgensen]

Tim Higgins <tim at timhiggins.com> writes:

>> On Mar 27, 2020, at 7:05 AM, Toke Høiland-Jørgensen <toke at redhat.com> wrote:
>> 
>> (Adding flent-users at flent.org - please also include this in
>> Flent-specific questions)
>> 
>>> I might be confusing myself, but need to ask the question. What does flent
>>> define as upload and download?
>>> 
>>> Netperf docs say:
>>> The TCP_STREAM test is the default test in netperf. It is quite simple,
>>> transferring some quantity of data from the system running netperf to the
>>> system running netserver.
>>> 
>>> So why, when I look at tcp_1up_noping.conf does the DATA_SETS have 'test':
>>> 'TCP_STREAM' in the 'TCP_upload' dictionary?
>> 
>> Flent considers itself the client, so 'upload' is TCP_STREAM. As more
>> use cases have emerged, this has turned out to not always be the case,
>> of course; WiFi test scenarios such as you are doing being the most
>> prominent example. There's a --swap-up-down parameter which will switch
>> all instances of TCP_STREAM to TCP_MAERTS and vice-versa, though.
>> 
>>> Second question: Is there any documentation that can help me figure out
>>> exactly what traffic is running in each test type?
>>> I've tried looking at the .conf and .inc files, in flent/tests but can't
>>> figure it out.
>> 
>> Not really :/ There's https://flent.org/tests.html, but it hasn't really
>> kept up with new tests being added.
>> 
>> However, you can see it after the fact: The exact command lines for each
>> data series is stored (along with a bunch of other data) in the
>> SERIES_META object in the data file. Use the GUI to browse this, or
>> print it with 'flent -f metadata datafile.flent.gz'.
>> 
>> -Toke
>> 
> Thanks again, Toke. Looks like you anticipated my questions in the design! :)

You're welcome! And more like you are running into the same problems I
did myself originally, while running experiments quite similar to yours :)

BTW, my full data set for my own WiFi experiments are here:

https://www.cs.kau.se/tohojo/airtime-fairness/
https://www.cs.kau.se/tohojo/polifi/

The data files should also contain the Flent batch files and setup
scripts; feel free to re-use anything you need :)

-Toke