Menu
Home
People
Places
Arts
History
Plants & Animals
Science
Life & Culture
Technology
Reference.org
Flowgrind
open-in-new
<p>Flowgrind is a testing and benchmarking tool to measure throughput and other metrics for <a href="/facts/Transmission_Control_Protocol/WW4sPrt9">TCP</a>. It was originally developed to study performance and behavior of TCP variants within <a href="/facts/Wireless_mesh_networks/mGvuc3tM">Wireless mesh networks</a>. </p><p>In contrast to similar tools like <a href="/facts/Iperf/hUhjv6yq">Iperf</a> or <a href="/facts/Netperf/pXzatP4l">Netperf</a> it features a distributed architecture, where throughput and other metrics are measured between flowgrind <a href="/facts/Server_(computing)/dEaYFD7r">server</a> processes. The Flowgrind <a href="/facts/Client_(computing)/u0wlVsWI">client</a> has the purpose to schedule such measurements and collect the measurement data. </p><p>Inherent with this architecture and its designation for <a href="/facts/Wireless_mesh_networks/mGvuc3tM">Wireless mesh networks</a> flowgrind supports: </p> <ul><li>separation of measured traffic and control traffic (e.g., to measure the wireless performance, but don't let the control traffic interfere),</li> <li>a simultaneous measurement between any number of hosts running the flowgrind server (e.g., to create wireless crosstalk),</li> <li>uni-directional, bi-directional or sophisticated request/response tests (e.g., to simulate various usage scenarios and protocols) and</li> <li><a href="/facts/Pcap/3FGCSqBf">packet capture</a> support (e.g., for offline in-depth traffic analysis).</li></ul> <p>Flowgrind allows the user to set various protocol parameters (e.g. the <a href="/facts/Congestion_control/9ohkRMso">Congestion control</a> algorithm) individually for each connection. This can be used to explore how certain settings affect network utilization and how they may compete which each other. </p><p>Unlike most cross-platform testing tools, besides <a href="/facts/Application_layer/FAFhLruA">application layer</a> metrics, Flowgrind can output some <a href="/facts/Transport_layer/UmIGUCeK">transport layer</a> metrics, which are usually internal to the <a href="/facts/TCP/IP/KNkxtSpw">TCP/IP</a> Stack. For example, on Linux this includes the kernel's estimation of the end-to-end <a href="/facts/Round-trip_delay_time/jYgNMK98">round-trip time</a> and the size of the <a href="/facts/Congestion_window/gC9Fer09">congestion window</a>. </p>