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PTF tests for BESS-UPF

Overview

The aim of implementing a test framework for UPF is to create a developer-friendly infrastructure for creating either single-packet or high-speed tests that assess UPF features at a component level.

This "component-level" is achieved by bypassing calls to the PFCP agent, in favor of communicating with BESS directly via gRPC.

Routes

This figure illustrates two options for communicating with the UPF. In this framework, we opt for BESS gRPC calls instead of calls to the PFCP agent because they allow direct communication between the framework and the BESS instance for both installing rules and reading metrics.

Workflow

Tests require two separate machines to run, since both TRex and UPF use DPDK. Currently, the test workflow is as such:

Test

In step 1, rules are installed onto the UPF instance by the test framework via BESS gRPC messages.

In step 2, TRex or Scapy (depending on the type of test case) generates traffic to the UPF across NICs and physical links.

In step 3, traffic routes through the UPF and back to the machine hosting TRex, where results are asserted.

Required Tools/Components

  • PTF (Packet Testing Framework): a data plane testing framework written in Python
  • TRex: a high-speed traffic generator built on top of DPDK, containing a Python API

Directory Structure

config

This directory contains YAML config file definition for TRex along with other personalized config files

lib

This directory contains general purpose libraries and classes to be imported in PTF test definitions

tests

This directory contains all of the test case definitions (written in Python), as well as scripts for running them in a test environment. We currently provide two general types of test cases:

  • unary: tests are single packet tests that assess UPF performance in specific scenarios. Packets are crafted and sent to the UPF using the Scapy packet library.

    Example: a unary test could use Scapy to send a single non-encapsulated UDP packet to the core interface of the UPF, and assert that a GTP-encapsulated packet was received from the access interface

  • linerate: tests assess the UPF's performance in certain scenarios at high speeds. This allows UPF features to be verified that they perform as expected in an environment more representative of production level. Traffic is generated using the TRex Python API.

    Example: a line rate test could assert the baseline throughput, latency, etc. of the UPF is as expected when handling high-speed downlink traffic from 10,000 unique UEs

Run tests

The run script assumes that the TRex daemon server and the UPF instance are already running on their respective machines. Please see here for instructions to deploy the UPF in DPDK mode. Note that the following additional changes are required in the conf/upf.jsonc file: "measure_flow": true, N3 interface set to "ifname": "access" and N6 interface set to "ifname": "core". To install TRex onto your server, please refer to the TRex installation guide

Steps

  1. Update the following files accordingly to route traffic to the UPF and vice versa.
  • ptf/.env file updated with UPF_ADDR and TREX_ADDR parameters
  • ptf/config/trex-cfg-for-ptf.yaml file updated with proper values for interfaces, port_info, and platform parameters
  • ptf/tests/linerate/common.py file updated with proper MAC address values for TREX_SRC_MAC, UPF_CORE_MAC, and UPF_ACCESS_MAC
  1. Move into the ptf directory
cd ptf
  1. Generate BESS Python protobuf files for gRPC library and PTF Dockerfile image build dependencies:
make build
  1. Run PTF tests using the run_tests script:
./run_tests -t [test-dir] [optional: filename/filename.test_case]

Examples

To run all test cases in the unary/ directory:

./run_tests -t tests/unary

To run a specific test case:

./run_tests -t tests/linerate/ baseline.DownlinkPerformanceBaselineTest
./run_tests -t tests/linerate/ mbr
./run_tests -t tests/linerate/ qos_metrics

Note: If the above fails, sudo may be needed