networkquality-rs

networkquality-rs is a collection of tools for measuring the quality of a network. This repo provides a CLI tool mach which can be used to run multiple different tests. The main focus of mach and this repo is to implement the IETF draft: "Responsiveness under Working Conditions".

The draft defines "responsiveness", measured in Round trips Per Minute (RPM), as a useful measurement of network quality. mach's default operation is to measure the responsiveness of a network using Cloudflare's responsiveness servers.

Installing

First, install rust.

Then build and run the binary at ./target/release/mach:

cargo build --release

# run an rpm test
./target/release/mach

Or install it with cargo:

cargo install --path ./cli

# run an RPM test
mach

Running mach

mach defaults to running a responsiveness test when given no arguments, the equivalent to mach rpm.

Use mach help to see a list of subcommands and mach help <subcommand> or mach <subcommand> help to see options for that command.

Examples

Running a responsiveness test:

mach rpm
{
  "unloaded_latency_ms": 10.819,
  "jitter_ms": 6.945,
  "download": {
    "throughput": 104846062,
    "loaded_latency_ms": 86.936,
    "rpm": 446
  },
  "upload": {
    "throughput": 48758784,
    "loaded_latency_ms": 206.837,
    "rpm": 433
  }
}

RPM reports are automatically uploaded to Cloudflare's aim database and are anonymous. See https://blog.cloudflare.com/aim-database-for-internet-quality/ for more information.

Use --disable-aim-scores to disable uploading reports.

Running a responsiveness test with Apple's server:

mach rpm -c https://mensura.cdn-apple.com/.well-known/nq

Timing the download of a resource:

mach download https://cloudflare.com/cdn-cgi/trace
{
  "dns_time": 0.0,
  "time_connect": 0.078,
  "time_secure": 0.243,
  "time_body": 0.0,
  "time_total": 0.243,
  "bytes_total": 228,
  "throughput": 7476
}

Measuring latency using TCP connection timing:

mach rtt
{
  "jitter_ms": 2.949,
  "latency_ms": 10.549
}

Debugging

mach respects RUST_LOG env variables. If you want (likely too much) information on what's happening internally, run mach with RUST_LOG=info set.

RUST_LOG=info mach

Architecture

The main complexity in the repo is due to the Network and Time trait abstractions. We need those abstractions for two reasons. First, it allows us to abstract over the underlying request/response implementation which will help with WASM/browser support in the future. Second, we use the network abstraction to define a Proxy network. This allows us to not only directly test H1, H2, or H3 connections, but also to test the impact of a multi-hop proxy network. The network trait is built in composable manner; multiple proxy networks can be layered on each other to build any proxy configuration.

Crates

networkquality-rs is split into multiple crates are under the ./crates directory. They are combined together to form the mach cli under ./cli.

• nq-core: the core crate which defines the Time and Network abstractions. It also provides functionality for creating and driving H1 and H2 connections over an abstracted IO transport: ByteStream. Finally, it provides a low-level HTTP Client used to send arbitrary HTTP requests as well as a ThroughputClient which uses a special CountingBody to measure the throughput of an HTTP connection.

• nq-tokio-network: a Network implementation based on tokio (and indirectly on hyper).

• nq-proxy-network: a Network implementation that wraps another network. To create a new connection for users, the ProxyNetwork sends CONNECT requests over the inner, wrapped Network to the configured proxy server. This is currently unused, however will be added in the future.

• nq-stats: provides Timeseries and Counter types for storing measurements and running simple statisitcs on those series.

• nq-rpm: a speedtest which implements the "Responsiveness under Working Conditions" draft.

• nq-latency: a speedtest which measures latency by timing how long it takes to setup multiple TCP connections.

• nq-load-generator: provides a LoadGenerator implementation used to create load saturated network conditions.

TODOs

• implement upload command.
  • uploading a given number of bytes.
  • uploading arbitrary files.
• time DNS resolution.
• better TUI experience for all commands.
• QUIC support.
• MASQUE proxying support.
  • support RPK TLS.
• Output format:
  • JSON
    • determine stability / extensions.
  • Human output
• send AIM score reports
• automated testing
  • latency comparisions with curl
  • RPM comparisions with different tools against the same server
  • review/better test statistics
• socket stats for measuring connection throughput
• RPM stability decreases as interval duration decreases. Look into calculating a better CountingBody update rate.
• Properly signal the connections on a network to shutdown.