IT Tools: Multicast
Hammer User Guide
Nortel Information Technology Multicast Hammer User Guide
Contents
IT Tools: Multicast Hammer User Guide................................................................ 1
Contents........................................................................................................................... 2
Introduction to Multicast Hammer .......................................................................... 3
What is this tool used for?........................................................................................ 3
Getting Started.............................................................................................................. 4
System Requirements for Multicast Hammer...................................................... 4
Installing Multicast Hammer .................................................................................... 4
Using the Multicast Hammer Tool ........................................................................... 7
Graphical User Interface ........................................................................................... 7
Example Multicast Test ........................................................................................... 10
Example Unicast Test .............................................................................................. 11
Known Issues ............................................................................................................. 13
Support for the Tool................................................................................................... 13
Additional IT Tools Information ............................................................................. 13
Additional Multicasting Information..................................................................... 14
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Nortel Information Technology Multicast Hammer User Guide
Introduction to Multicast Hammer
What is this tool used for?
When a multicast server sends traffic to multicast clients, the server does not typically know
anything about the clients it is sending to. The server relies on multicast enabled nodes
throughout the network to forward the transmission to clients that the nodes know are
listening. As there is no direct connection from the server to the client, tracing or
troubleshooting an issue in a multicast environment can be very challenging using common
networking tools. Because of this, Nortel IT created Multicast Hammer to use as a testing
tool for internal trials of multicast products.
Multicast Hammer is an easy to use testing tool that allows a network engineer or
administrator to test and validate multicast configurations on their network. The tool
provides a quick and simple means of creating multicast servers that transmit unicast streams
to multicast group addresses, along with the setup of multiple clients that listen to these
addresses. Multicast Hammer can be placed at multiple points in the network, and each
instance of the tool serves as either a client or server to log events and control the input of
the streams (see Figure 1).
Sending Multicast UDP Listening for Multicast
Traffic to Multicast Group UDP Traffic on Multicast
Address Group Address
Multicast Client
Multicast Server
Multicast Client
Multicast-Enabled
Network
Multicast Client
Multicast Server
Multicast Client
Figure 1: Multicast Hammer Network Topology
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Nortel Information Technology Multicast Hammer User Guide
Multicast Hammer is used in a graphical user interface (GUI) form. The GUI form (Figure
2) of the tool is very easy to use and configure so that the tester can perform a wide range of
tests on their multicast environment.
Figure 2: Multicast Hammer GUI in Server (Left) and Client (Right) modes.
Getting Started
This section contains information on system requirements and describes how to install the
tool.
System Requirements for Multicast Hammer
The Multicast Hammer tool can be run on any Windows based operating system that can
support Java applications. As the tool is a Java based application, Java version 1.4 or higher
is required to run the tool.
Installing Multicast Hammer
1) Download the tool to the system(s) it will be run on for your tests.
2) Run multicasthammer_install_2.1.exe on the system that will be part of your test
environment.
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Nortel Information Technology Multicast Hammer User Guide
3) An Introduction window will appear after the installer is unpackaged. Click on Next
and the License Agreement window will appear like the one below. After reading
the License Agreement, select the radio button saying “I accept the terms of the
License Agreement” if you agree and click Next.
4) Choose where you would like to install the tool on your system or use the default
location already populated in the field. Then click Next.
5) There are many options for shortcuts during the installation but only one can be
selected. Select which shortcut type you would prefer for accessing the tool once it
is installed and click Next.
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Nortel Information Technology Multicast Hammer User Guide
6) Determine if you would like to install the Java Virtual Machine (version 1.4) with the
tool or if you would prefer to use an existing Java Virtual Machine on your system.
Remember that the Java Virtual Machine must be version 1.4 or higher. Once
you have selected the Java Virtual Machine you would like to use, click Next.
7) Review the Pre-Installation Summary and then click Install.
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Nortel Information Technology Multicast Hammer User Guide
8) Once the installation has completed, click Done on the Install Complete window.
You should be able to start the tool by using which ever shortcut medium you
selected in Step 5.
Using the Multicast Hammer Tool
There are a number of configurations that can be made depending on your network
configuration and test scenarios. In the following sections, the graphical user interface of
the tool will be discussed in terms of how to start it and what it is capable of doing.
Graphical User Interface
In order to run the tool, you can either run the executable or use your command prompt to
start the tool’s graphical user interface.
To run the GUI from a Windows command prompt, open your command prompt and cd
to the Program_Files\MulticastHammer directory. If you chose to have your tool installed
in a different directory during the installation, use the directory that the tool was installed in.
Then type in the following command to start the GUI:
MulticastHammerGUI
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Nortel Information Technology Multicast Hammer User Guide
Figure 3: Multicast Hammer GUI in Server (Left) and Client (Right) modes.
The GUI has many options that can aid you in performing a wide range of testing on a
multicast network. In the GUI, options change depending on if the tool is running in client
versus server mode and if the traffic is to be multicast or unicast traffic. In order to more
effectively use each option, a description of each option and the mode that the option is
useable in has been provided below.
Client Multicast
GUI or or
Description
Options Server Unicast
Mode Mode
Local Both Both This setting sets the tool to either be a server (traffic
Mode generator) or a client (traffic listener). There can be
multiple instances of both clients and servers within
your test network, but typically you only need one
server.
Stream Both Both There are two transmission stream types that can be
Type selected, either a unicast stream or multicast streams.
Both types of transmission streams generate UDP
(User Datagram Protocol) and ICMP (Internet Control
Messaging Protocol) traffic. Multicast streams are
useful in verifying multiple nodes and paths along the
network while unicast streams verify a specific node
and path.
Traffic Server Unicast The server can send either One-Way traffic to the
Direction client or it can send Bidirectional traffic to the client.
With bidirectional traffic, the server sends the data to
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Nortel Information Technology Multicast Hammer User Guide
the client and requests a response back from the client.
This can be helpful in establishing the round trip time
for messages.
Network Both Both This setting allows you to select which network
Interface interface on the test device should be used in order to
perform the test.
Multicast Both Multicast This setting can range from 1 to 255 and designates the
Groups number of multicast group addresses that the multicast
traffic will be sent across or listened to. The number
of group addresses does not have to be the same
between the server and client instances of the tool.
First Both Multicast This setting sets the starting multicast address for the
Group multicast group. All other addresses in the group will
increment by one until the desired number of
addresses are created. The range for valid multicast
addresses is from 224.0.0.1 to 239.255.255.255.
UDP Port Both Both This represents the port that the UDP traffic is sent to
Number from the server and that the client is listening to. It is
recommended that you not use ports that are known to
already be in use on your network. The default UDP
Port Number for the tool is 8910.
Time to Both Both This setting ranges from 0 to 255 and represents the
Live time for a packet of traffic to remain in the system
before being discarded. The default time to live is 33.
Note: Very low time to live numbers could cause an
increase in lost/dropped packets depending on the
number of routing hops in your network test.
TOS Both Both This setting sets up the type of service octet within
(Type of your packets. The default value is 1, but you should
Service) check with your network administrator to determine
how your network defines type of service.
Transmit Server Both The slider for the transmit speed gives a relative
Speed measure of the transmission speed possible by the tool.
It can be moved throughout the tests or left at a set
point depending on your test scenario.
Payload Server Both The slider for the payload bytes ranges from 32 to 1400
Bytes and sets the size of the payload for the UDP traffic.
This can be modified throughout your test if you
would like to change the payload size during the test.
Burst Server Both The slider for burst packets allows the tester to stress
Packets the network link by adding additional packets to the
transmission, as you would see when a high bandwidth
application transmits through the network. For most
testing, this slider should be set to 1, but it can be
changed during tests to observe performance under
additional stress.
Graph Both Both The Graph button pulls up a window in the tool that
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Nortel Information Technology Multicast Hammer User Guide
tracks the fluctuations in traffic over a period of time.
Add Server Unicast The Add button allows you to add a destination IP
address that you wish to send unicast traffic to. This
button is only viewable in unicast mode.
Del Server Unicast The Del button allows you to remove destination IP
(Delete) addresses when running in unicast mode.
As your test is being run, there is also a set of fields that track the performance of each
multicast group address from the client side. Here is a description of each of the fields:
¾ Bytes (Shown in both the Client and Server mode) – The number of bytes
transmitted (Server) or the number of bytes received (Client).
¾ Bits/second (Shown in both the Client and Server mode) – The transmission
speed of the server or the receiving speed of the client.
¾ Lost Packets (Client Only) – The number of packets that were lost during the
transmission. In an ideal world the number of lost packets would be zero, so you
would want this value to be as low as possible.
¾ Jitter (Client Only) – This measurement tracks the congestion and variation that is
present in the network as the packets travel through. Jitter is close to zero in a well
set up network, but tolerances will vary based on transmission speed. The jitter
measurement is based off of RFC 1889 and the calculation for it is:
J = J + (|D(i-1, i)| - J) / 16
Note: D(i-1, i) is the difference in arrival times from one packet to the next
packet that arrives (not necessarily in sequence) at the receiver.
¾ Sequence Error (SEQERR) – The number of packets that are received in a
different order than the order they were sent in. Like packet loss, this number
should be as low as possible.
Example Multicast Test
A basic test for multicast traffic is to test the connectivity between a single server and client.
To perform this test or a similar test, follow the steps below:
1. Start the Multicast Hammer tool on both the server device and the client device.
2. Set the Multicast Hammer tool’s Local Mode to Server on the server device and
Client on the client device.
3. Ensure that Multicast is set as the Stream Type on both the server and client tools.
4. Select the Network Interface for each device and insert the number of Multicast
Groups (for this example we are using three) that you would like to test with.
5. Set the First Group address to a multicast address (224.0.0.1 to 239.255.255.255)
that is the same for both the client and the server.
6. Set the UDP Port number to the same number on both the server and client, but
make sure that you are not using a port that is already in use on your network.
7. On the server, insert a Time to Live number that will give the multicast traffic
enough time to be transmitted to the client.
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Nortel Information Technology Multicast Hammer User Guide
8. For both the server and the client, set the Type of Service for your multicast traffic
in accordance with the type of service settings for your network.
9. Slide the Transmit Speed, Payload Bytes, and Burst Packets sliders on the
multicast server to the settings that you would like to start with for your test. These
sliders can be adjusted throughout the test so that you can test multiple facets of the
network. It is recommended that the Burst Packets slider be set to 1 unless you are
trying to place additional strain on the network in your test.
10. For both the server and the client, click on the Start button to begin transmitting
and receiving multicast traffic, respectively.
Figures 4 and 5 show the settings for this test.
Figure 4: Multicast Hammer Test Server Settings
Figure 5: Multicast Hammer Test Client Settings
After the test has been run, you can look at the results on the client node to see if there was
any packet loss, network jitter or sequence errors that occurred during the transmission.
These values obtained from your test should give you a good idea of how well your multicast
network is running and if there are any issues that need to be corrected.
Example Unicast Test
Unicast traffic can be tested by verifying the connectivity between a single server and client.
To perform this test or a similar test, follow the steps below:
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Nortel Information Technology Multicast Hammer User Guide
1. Start the Multicast Hammer tool on both the server device and the client device.
2. Set the Multicast Hammer tool’s Local Mode to Server on the server device and
Client on the client device.
3. Ensure that Unicast is set as the Stream Type on both the server and client tools.
4. Set the Traffic Direction to One-Way on the server device.
5. Select the Network Interface for each device from the drop-down list.
6. Set the UDP Port number to the same number on both the server and client, but
make sure that you are not using a port that is already in use on your network.
7. For both the server and the client, set the Type of Service for your multicast traffic
in accordance with the type of service settings for your network.
8. Slide the Transmit Speed, Payload Bytes, and Burst Packets sliders on the
multicast server to the settings that you would like to start with for your test. These
sliders can be adjusted throughout the test so that you can test multiple facets of the
network. It is recommended that the Burst Packets slider be set to 1 unless you are
trying to place additional strain on the network in your test.
9. Click on the Add button and enter the IP address for the client being tested into the
pop-up box provided (Figure 6).
Figure 6: Adding a Destination IP for the Unicast Test
10. For both the server and the client, click on the Start button to begin transmitting
and receiving multicast traffic, respectively. Figure 7 shows the settings and results
from a brief run of this test.
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Nortel Information Technology Multicast Hammer User Guide
Figure 6: Multicast Hammer running Unicast test with Server (Left) and Client (Right)
Once your test has been run, you can view the results on the client node to see if there was
any packet loss, network jitter or sequence errors that occurred during the transmission. The
results from your test should give you a good idea of how well your unicast link is running
and if there are any issues that need to be corrected.
Known Issues
¾ If you have problems getting the Multicast Hammer tool to work, please check your
firewall software as it can prevent the transmission of Multicast Hammer’s ICMP
(Internet Control Message Protocol) messages and other test traffic.
¾ As Multicast Hammer can generate a heavy load of UDP (User Datagram Protocol)
traffic, other users on the network may experience lower network performance
during high bandwidth testing.
Support for the Tool
This tool is not formally supported, but we will provide email assistance as we are able. If
you require support on this tool, please email the IT tools team at: talkIT@nortel.com
Additional IT Tools Information
Multicast Hammer and other Nortel IT tools can be found in the IT Tools section of the
Nortel on Nortel site.
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Nortel Information Technology Multicast Hammer User Guide
Additional Multicasting Information
RFC 3170: http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3170
Wikipedia.org entry for Multicasting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multicast
Copyright © 2008 Nortel Networks. All Rights Reserved.
While the information in this document is believed to be accurate and reliable, except as otherwise expressly agreed to in
writing NORTEL PROVIDES THIS DOCUMENT "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OR CONDITION OF ANY KIND,
EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED. The information and/or products described in this document are subject to change
without notice. Nortel Networks, the Nortel Networks logo and the Globemark are trademarks of Nortel Networks. Java
trademark and all Java-related trademarks are Sun trademarks. All other brand and product names are trademarks or
registered trademarks of their respective holders.
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