PacketRusher: UE/gNB simulator

[linouxis9]

Hi Gradiant/Openverso Team,

In case you are looking for a second gNB/UE Simulator or a 5G Core stress tester to evaluate the performance of the 5G Core, you may try my new open-source tool PacketRusher.
It supports the simulation of multiples UEs and gNodeBs right from a single tool, an high performance N3 tunnel, and it supports some advanced control plane features such as roaming (using open5gs's new roaming feature for example) and gNodeB handover.

If you need any help, feel free to reach out to me :-) I'm looking forward to collaborate!

Cheers,
Valentin

[cgiraldo]

Hi Valentin,
the PacketRusher simulator sounds great. We will definitively take a look to it and come back to you.

Have you try PacketRusher in kubernetes?
We mainly deploy our 5G services as Cloud-Native network functions in kubernetes (Helm charts). You can take a look to the https://github.com/Gradiant/openverso-charts repository if you are interested.

Cheers,
Carlos

[linouxis9]

Hi Carlos!

Thanks for your interest in PacketRusher :-) I know that some people in the community are integrating PacketRusher in k8s.
But we have yet ourselves to try PacketRusher in k8s, but it should be able to work provided the gtp5g kernel module is installed on the worker nodes (same requirement as free5gc's UPF) and the pod is running with privileges. We are currently in the process of replacing gtp5g with eUPF's eBPF HewlettPackard/PacketRusher#47 which should fix this shortcoming.
I would expect PacketRusher to perform best with Multus's MacVLAN/SR-IOV or host interfaces, but it should work with the default CNI interface.

If I can be of any help for your smooth usage of PacketRusher, feel free to reach out to me! I would be glad to help.

Thanks and cheers,
Valentin

[avrodriguezgrad]

Hi @linouxis9

We've uploaded a PacketRusher image, and a tutorial on how to use it. I've tested it on my laptop, and it works. I'm going to create a Helm chart now, and test PacketRusher in K8s. I'll keep you posted.

BR,
Álvaro

[linouxis9]

Excellent @avrodriguezgrad!! Thanks a lot for your hard work! I'll make sure to take a look at your work.

I'll answer on your issue as well :-)

[linouxis9]

Also an interesting point to note, is that PacketRusher works with Open5GS's 2.7.0 roaming feature if you are interested in that Open5GS feature! (Just use different MCC/MNC for UE and gNodeB in the configuration).

[avrodriguezgrad]

Currently, we are not working with roaming, but I'll try to check it, sounds interesting!

Now, I've released a Helm chart about PacketRusher! You can see it here: Gradiant/5g-charts@f4c7a9e

I've tested with Open5GS also, and it works. In the following days, I'll go a step ahead and test it with Multus.

I will tell you the progress!

BR,
Álvaro

[linouxis9]

Amazing, thanks a lot for your hard work!

Trying PacketRusher with Multus was on my to-do list, so please do share the results on how it goes.

Thanks a lot!

Cheers,
Valentin