Introduction to TCP/UDP performance testing

Test Agents include a powerful active traffic generator tool that can send TCP and UDP traffic to other Test Agents, enabling you to test and troubleshoot your network connections.

The receiving Test Agents at the other end of the network link will calculate packet loss, jitter, and minimum/average/maximum delay, as well as determine if your network has the expected performance and quality for applications such as IP telephony, Citrix, and videoconferencing.

For TCP and UDP traffic generation, Paragon Active Assurance supports both point-to-point and hub-and-spoke setups. In a hub-and-spoke setup, all selected Paragon Active Assurance “clients” will exchange traffic with the Test Agent selected as “server”. For UDP, TCP and VoIP UDP, Paragon Active Assurance also supports the full-mesh setup, where the system automatically generates connections between all selected Paragon Active Assurance clients.

TCP and UDP traffic is initiated by the clients, and traffic from the server back to the clients is sent on the same ports. This makes it possible to send traffic through a NAT router, as long as the Test Agent placed behind the NAT is designated as a client.

The performance metrics in tests affect fail/pass criteria, and in monitoring sessions they are compared to the thresholds in the SLA.

For details on individual TCP/UDP performance test tasks, see the following pages:

• TCP

• Multisession TCP

• UDP

• VoIP UDP

• Multicast UDP

• TCP throughput test according to RFC 6349

• QoS policy profiling