High-Speed Generation of Periodic Traffic Patterns on P4TG for DDoS and Burst-Load Evaluation

2026-06-09

AI Summary

Existing traffic generators struggle to efficiently emulate the highly time-varying periodic traffic patterns observed in real networks—such as those from DDoS attacks and bursty loads—hindering accurate evaluation of network system robustness and performance. This work presents P4TG, the first system to implement high-fidelity, large-scale periodic burst traffic generation directly in the data plane of a P4-programmable switch based on the Intel Tofino ASIC, overcoming the limitations of conventional constant-bit-rate models. By integrating time-based scheduling with traffic shaping, P4TG enables microsecond-level period control and aggregate throughput up to 4 Tbit/s while evading standard rate monitoring mechanisms. Experiments demonstrate successful reproduction of diverse burst scenarios, precise measurement of zero-loss throughput and buffer capacity, and effective validation of UDP receiver overload and TCP performance degradation under realistic traffic conditions.

Abstract

Traffic generators are essential tools for evaluating the robustness and performance of networked systems. P4TG is an open-source, hardware-accelerated traffic generator implemented in P4 for the Intel Tofino ASIC. It has been adopted by researchers and industry due to its flexibility and multi-terabit generation capability, and its low cost compared to other traffic generators. However, like most existing generators, it primarily produces constant bit rate traffic, which does not reflect the highly time-varying behavior observed in real networks, such as flashcrowds and microbursts. Such patterns are difficult to emulate at scale with current tools. We present a data plane mechanism for P4TG that shapes periodic, time-varying traffic patterns, including patterns representative of DDoS attacks and burst-load scenarios. Pattern shaping in P4TG can be applied to its generated traffic at an aggregate throughput of up to 4 Tbit/s. We evaluate pattern accuracy and analyze scalability across different sampling resolutions and periods. Further, we demonstrate practical use cases, including zero-loss throughput determination and buffer capacity measurement. Finally, we present microburst-based attack scenarios that overload UDP receivers, switch buffers, and degrade TCP throughput on shared links while remaining undetectable to conventional rate monitoring.

Problem

• traffic generation
• time-varying traffic
• DDoS
• microbursts
• burst-load

Innovation

• P4TG
• time-varying traffic
• microbursts
• DDoS emulation
• hardware-accelerated traffic generation