How to Set up a WAN Traffic Quality Monitoring Network Using D-ITG

This a stub article for an interesting side project I'm  currently doing on monitoring internet link quality (Jitter, Loss, Response Time, Bandwidth etc ...) on a global WAN.

Core Technology

I've chosen to use D-ITG as a monitoring analysis tool due to it's impressive range of traffic generation and metering features, and due to the fact that it can be built into a complete network quality monitoring system for ongoing monitoring, rather than a tool for occasional troubleshooting.

From the D-ITG documentation:

"D-ITG (Distributed Internet Traffic Generator) is a platform capable [of producing] IPv4 and IPv6 traffic by accurately replicating the workload of current Internet applications. D-ITG can generate traffic following stochastic models for packet size (PS) and inter departure time (IDT) ..."

More at the project website:

http://traffic.comics.unina.it/software/ITG/download.php

What's a "Traffic Monitoring Network"?

Well, it's a network of nodes (actually, servers) distributed at key points in a corporate WAN that send and receive traffic from each other in order to measure and monitor the quality of various network paths along that WAN. The idea is to actively monitor the quality of traffic from any given point on the network to all other points (we care about, that is), in order to get a better overall idea of the network's stability and quality.

So basically, it's a monitoring overlay for the WAN.

How to Build one?

Install some linux servers, one at each PoP of interest on your WAN.
Install D-ITG receiver and sender at each node, install a plotter/grapher somewhere convenient, devise some traffic generation tests, and let her rip ... Then sit back and enjoy the graphs.