About
tcpkali is a high performance TCP and WebSocket load generator and sink.
Features
- Opens millions of connections from a single host by using available interface aliases.
- Efficient multi-core operation (
--workers); utilizes all available cores by default. - Allows opening massive number of connections (
--connections) - Allows limiting an upstream and downstream of a single connection throughput (
--channel-bandwidth-downstream,--channel-bandwidth-upstreamor--message-rate) - Allows specifying the first and subsequent messages (
--message,--first-message). - Measures response latency percentiles using HdrHistogram (
--latency-marker) - Sends stats to StatsD/DataDog (
--statsd)
Quick example: testing a web server
tcpkali -em "GET / HTTP/1.1\r\nHost: google.com\r\n\r\n" -r 10 \
--latency-marker "HTTP/1.1" google.com:80
Install
From packages
| OS | Package manager | Command |
|---|---|---|
| Mac OS X | Homebrew | brew install tcpkali |
| Mac OS X | MacPorts | port install tcpkali |
| FreeBSD | pkgng | pkg install tcpkali |
| Linux | nix | nix-env -i tcpkali |
From sources
Install the following packages first:
- autoconf
- automake
- libtool
- bison
- flex
- gcc-c++
- ncurses-devel or equivalent ncurses package, optional.
Build and install:
test -f configure || autoreconf -iv
./configure
make
sudo make install
Usage (Short version)
Usage: tcpkali [OPTIONS] [-l <port>] [<host:port>...]
Where some OPTIONS are:
-h Print this help screen, then exit
--help Print long help screen, then exit
-d Dump i/o data for a single connection
-c <N> Connections to keep open to the destinations
-l <port> Listen on the specified port
--ws, --websocket Use RFC6455 WebSocket transport
-T <Time=10s> Exit after the specified amount of time
-e Unescape backslash-escaping in a message string
-1 <string> Message to send to the remote host once
-m <string> Message to repeatedly send to the remote
-r <Rate> Messages per second to send in a connection
Variable units and recognized multipliers:
<N>, <Rate>: k (1000, as in "5k" is 5000), m (1000000)
<Time>: ms, s, m, h, d (milliseconds, seconds, minutes, hours, days)
<Rate> and <Time> can be fractional values, such as 0.25.
You can get the full list of options using tcpkali --help, from
man tcpkali, and by consulting the
tcpkali man page source.
Usage Examples
A few command line examples
TCP Examples
Connect to a local web server and do nothing:
tcpkali 127.0.0.1:80
Connect to a local echo server and hammer it with stream of dollars:
tcpkali --message '$' localhost:echo
tcpkali -m '$' localhost:echo
Open 10000 connections to two remote servers:
tcpkali --connections 10000 yahoo.com:80 google.com:80
tcpkali -c 10k yahoo.com:80 google.com:80
Open 100 connections to itself and do nothing:
tcpkali --connections 100 --listen-port 12345 127.0.0.1:12345
tcpkali -c100 -l12345 127.1:12345
Open a connection to itself and send lots of cookies:
tcpkali --listen-port 12345 --message "cookies" 127.0.0.1:12345
tcpkali -l 12345 -m "cookies" 127.1:12345
Listen for incoming connections and throw away data for 3 hours:
tcpkali --listen-port 12345 --duration 3h
tcpkali -l12345 -T3h
WebSocket examples
Open connection to the local WebSocket server, send hello, and wait:
tcpkali --websocket --first-message "hello" 127.0.0.1:80
Open connection to the local server and send tons of empty JSON frames:
tcpkali --websocket --message "\{ws.text}" 127.1:80
Send a binary frame with a picture every second (angle brackets are literal):
tcpkali --ws -m "\{ws.binary <image.png>}" -r1 127.1:80