TICKET
Traditionally, tools for monitoring and measuring aggregate network
traffic are either based on tcpdump or are implemented in hardware.
While the software-based tcpdump is portable and only requires a
typical PC with network interface card to run, it does not scale
beyond gigabit-per-second (Gb/s) speeds. Furthermore, the timestamp
granularity is only on the order of milliseconds. At the other end of
the spectrum, hardware-based monitors scale to Gb/s speeds with very
fine granularity timestamps, but at exorbitant cost. There is a need
for an inexpensive monitoring tool with fine granularity timestamps
which scales beyond gigabit speeds.
TICKET, which stands for Traffic Information
Collection Kernel with Exact Timing, is an
open-source software-based monitoring tool that is designed to scale
to at least 8 Gb/s [1]. TICKET uses the CPU cycle counter available on
on contemporary microprocessors for timestamps; thereby providing
(sub-) nanosecond granularity, rather than millisecond granularity of
other software-based solutions. Furthermore, it runs on typical PCs
with a network interface card.
Notes
[1] TICKET scales in step with the bus speed of the
network interface cards.
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