IPFIX Interoperability Event, March 1-2, 2006

The MOME project is organising an IPFIX Interoperability Event co-located with the 4^th International Workshop on Internet Performance, Simulation, Monitoring and Measurement (IPS2006) on March 1^st and 2^nd, 2006 in Salzburg, Austria. If you are working on an IPFIX implemantation you are kindly invited to attend - please contact This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it and This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it for registration.

IPFIX Interop test event purpose and objectives

The IPFIX interoperability event in Salzburg will provide a neutral environment for manufacturers, software companies and research institutes to test their implementations. This event focuses on the Monitoring and Measurement related IPFIX protocol and its implementations.

The IPFIX interoperability event aims on the following objectives and benefits:

To support ongoing research on traffic measurement and monitoring tools
To ensure that relevant and upcoming standards are understood and followed by projects and companies
To increase interoperability awareness and synergy between developers of companies and projects
To improve and debug implementations
To check the interoperability of implementations

An NDA (download PDF) needs to be signed for attending the IPFIX event. Only one NDA per participating company/university is required. Please either take the signed NDA with you to the
event, or fax it in advance to Mr. Felix Strohmeier, fax number: +43 662 2288 222.

Event Description

In the following the types of tests which implementers of IP Flow Information Export (IPFIX) compliant systems shall be able to perform on their IPFIX system during the Interoperability Event are listed. The goal of these tests is to ensure that all important functions are covered by tests and thereby to gain a level of confidence in the system which allows the implementers to target a real rollout of their software in the field. As a secondary goal this will help to detect open issues or inconsistencies in the IPFIX specification.

Motivation

The main driving force for the IPFIX Interoperability Event is the observation that implementations of protocols for data exchange often fail to work properly when realizations from different companies or organizations are in use together. In many cases this even holds true when tests had previously been performed successfully using an exporting and collecting process from one implementer. The tests listed here will form a valuable common basis for implementers involved in interoperability testing when all of them use these tests to check their own exporter and collector first.

Tentative Agenda

Wednesday 9:30 – 18:00
9:30 – 10:00		Introduction
10:00 – 11:00		Setup Network Connections
11:00		Coffee Break
11:10 – 13:00		Agree on Tests + Start Testing
13:00 – 14:00		Lunch Break
14:00 – 18:00		Further Testing
Thursday 9:30 – 18:00
9:30 – 11:00		Start Remaining Tests
11:00		Coffee Break
11:10 – 13:00		Further Testing
13:00 – 14:00		Lunch Break
14:00 – 18:00		Final Tests and Wrapup

Related Documents

For the IPFIX specification refer to the following documents: "Information Model for IP Flow Information Export" and "IPFIX Protocol Specification". For the used terminology with respect to IPFIX see "IPFIX Architecture". The documents are available at: http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/ipfix-charter.html

Planned Test Types

Actual Tests performed on the IPFIX Interoperability Event will be selected by the attendees of the event based on the capabilities of their implementations. They will be chosen from the tests described in the draft IP Flow Information Exchange (IPFIX) Testing. http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-schmoll-ipfix-testing-00.txt

Exporter/Collector Connectivity Tests

This test section will consider the basic tests which must succeed as a precondition for the more complex tests in later sections, i.e. successful TCP/SCTP connect and successful basic data transfer between an exporter and a collector.

Data Template and Data Transmission Tests

This test section will include the important tests for checking the correct transmission and interpretation of IPFIX templates and data sets.

Information Element Tests

This section lists the tests which cover the use of IPFIX Information Elements (IEs).

Options Templates Tests

This section lists the tests which cover the use of and the correct transfer of
IPFIX Options Templates together with the use of scope fields.

Stress/Load Tests

In this test section stress tests are used to check correct behavior and robustness of an IPFIX collector implementation when a number of data records arrive very quickly. This is especially important when IPFIX over UDP is used, since in that case a slow collector does not block the IPFIX exporter from sending as UDP is not congestion aware.

The tests may be dependant upon the hardware and transports technology in use. Therefore the tests may need to be scaled up or down to meet the needs of the particular implementation. However, the implementer SHOULD verify that his implementation is stable under excessive traffic conditions, for whatever definition of "excessive" applies at their intended installation.

Error Handling

This test section will list and describe problems which might occur in either the network or data transmission or related to wrong information encoding, and which your IPFIX system must be capable to handle in a graceful way. It is intended to test the robustness and fault tolerance of your IPFIX system.