ANNOUNCEMENT: RIPE NCC TTM, User Configurable Measurements with your Test-Box

Dear Test-box hosts,

We are pleased to announce a new feature on the (series C and D) RIPE NCC
Test-Boxes:

  User Configurable Measurements.

This feature allows you to specify measurements with (at the moment)
different rates and packet sizes than the standard 120 packets/day and 100
bytes/packet respectively.  In the future, this will be extended towards
setting QoS bits in the packets.

In this first version, we have limited the rate to 0.5 packets/second for
each measurement relation.  This is a soft limit, the system can actually
handle up to 100 Hz between each pair of test-boxes.  We'll raise the
limit after beta-testing.

To use this feature, go to the website on your Test-Box at:

  http://ttXX.ripe.net:10259/

With XX the number of your Test-Box and click on configuration.  Online
help is available.  If cannot access this website please check if your
test-box is a series C or D machine (serial number 48 or higher, or bought
after October 2000).  Also check if the IP address of your workstation is
inside the range you specified for access to the test-box. In case the
problem still persists, then please contact us at tt-ops at ripe.net.

Note that for this new version, the algorithm to set packet Identifiers
had to be changed.  Previously, Packet-ID's were equal to the time a
packet was supposed to be sent, rounded down to the nearest second. This
has been changed to something more complex.  If you have written tools
that rely on the packet-ID being almost equal to the send time, then
please use the code below to extract send-time from the new packet ID's.

Our plan is to allow you to test drive this for a few weeks, incorporate
any suggestions that you may have, then slowly raise limits and add
setting QoS bits.

Please send comments, questions and suggestions about this new feature
to tt-ops at ripe.net.

Kind regards,

Maximo, Rene, Henk and the rest of the RIPE NCC TTM Crew


.............................................................................

time_t DelayPlots::id2time(UInt_t packetid) {

#define LASTUNIXTIME 1025190000    // Thu Jun 27 15:00:00 2002 GMT
#define TIMEZERO     1009843200    // Tue Jan  1 00:00:00 2002 GMT
#define CYCLEPERIOD  20000000      // cycle period in seconds
#define FREQUENCY    100

        time_t packettime;
        int nCycles;
        UInt_t starttimeId;     // packetid at starttime

        if (starttime <= LASTUNIXTIME) {
                // no two cycles in delay plot
                if (packetid > LASTUNIXTIME) {
                        packettime = packetid / FREQUENCY + TIMEZERO;
                }
                else {
                        packettime = packetid;
                }
        }
        else {
                // all ids in new packetid schema
                nCycles = (starttime - TIMEZERO) / CYCLEPERIOD;
                starttimeId = (starttime - TIMEZERO - nCycles * CYCLEPERIOD) *
                              FREQUENCY ;
                if (packetid < starttimeId) {
                        // must have completed a cycle
                        nCycles++;
                }
                packettime = packetid / FREQUENCY + nCycles * CYCLEPERIOD +
                             TIMEZERO;
        }
        cout << packetid << " " << packettime << endl;
        return(packettime);
}
.............................................................................


------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Henk Uijterwaal                    Email: henk.uijterwaal at ripe.net
RIPE Network Coordination Centre     WWW: http://www.ripe.net/home/henk
Singel 258                         Phone: +31.20.5354414
1016 AB Amsterdam                    Fax: +31.20.5354445
The Netherlands                   Mobile: +31.6.55861746
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