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DHCP Server
DHCP Server
Test Plan
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2006 by Ixia
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Background
Dynamic Host Conguration Protocol (DHCP) is an essential part
of any IP network. It is used to dynamically provide IP address
and network conguration parameters to host systems. In fact,
the dynamic conguration of host systems is one of the key
reasons for using DHCP. DHCP is used extensively by enterprises
and service providers for wired and wireless/roaming networks.
It can be used to provide hosts with IP address/mask and
gateway address information and DNS servers, among several
other congurable options.
As enterprises grow beyond the traditional ofce walls, it
has become critical that host systems be authorized and
authenticated before providing network access. DHCP makes
this possible without the introduction and overhead of new
technologies. Using DHCP, end hosts can be authenticated
before providing conguration information. Specic options in
DHCP can be used to identify a host system, as well as the user
requesting network conguration.
Wireless hot spots and remote access technologies such as VPNs
also use DHCP to provide conguration to hosts connecting
to their IP network remotely. DHCP servers must be able to
accommodate this growing user base to support real-time
changes with minimal service outages.
In addition, Service Providers use DHCP to congure customer
premise equipment, effectively testing DHCP to assure carriergrade deployment. In a Carrier network, DHCP is used to
provide the expected class of service to various devices.
Consider the deployment of a Triple Play services delivery
network. A subscriber with multiple customer premise equipment,
such as a remote-gateway, a voice-gateway, and one or more IP
set-top boxes, will require a different class of service to perform
optimally. DHCP is essential in making this sophisticated service
deployment possible.
2006 by Ixia
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2006 by Ixia
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Performance Metrics
To determine the performance of a DHCP server, several
performance metrics will be used in this test plan. The following
terms are dened and used to provide objective performance
characteristics for the DHCP server, the device-under-test (DUT) in
this test plan.
Connection A single TCP connection between two end hosts,
using connection establishment (3-way handshake).
Transaction A single request for an object from a client to
server. A transaction is made within an established Connection.
Connections-per-second The rate at which new TCP connections
are initiated per second.
Transaction Response Time The amount of time elapsed
between the time a client sends a request and the time an
acceptable response to it is received.
Complete Transaction Response Time The amount of time
elapsed between the time a client sends the rst request and the
time the last acceptable response is received successfully from
subsequent requests.
Client Capacity Number of clients that a server can support.
The maximum client capacity of a server is the threshold beyond
which the server can no longer support any additional clients.
Success Rate The ratio of successful transactions calculated over
the total attempted transactions.
2006 by Ixia
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Basic Setup
The basic test conguration requires the DHCP server to host one
or more address scopes to lease to the DHCP clients. Specically,
a large pool of addresses must be congured to ensure sufcient
addresses are available for the test duration. One or more Ixia
test ports is required to send multiple DHCP requests to the server.
The test network will be a at network, and DHCP requests will be
broadcast on the local link to reach the DHCP server.
Ixia DHCP Clients
DHCP
Server
Ixia Port
DHCP Offer
(Broadcast)
DHCP Request
(Broadcast)
DHCP
Client
DHCP ACK
(Broadcast)
2006 by Ixia
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Advanced Setup
This advanced test conguration is appropriate when several
DHCP servers are responsible for hundreds of lease scopes. The
lease scopes may service users in different physical and logical
networks, using VLANs or routed networks.
To maintain high availability, the DHCP server is usually
congured for load balancing, and provides failover protection
using one of following methods (among others):
Server clustering a mirrored conguration for one or more
servers with an operating-system or hardware-based cluster
mechanism used to initiate failover.
Split scopes multiple servers share a reserved range for an
address scope.
DHCP failover multiple servers use a draft-rfc, and implement
a DHCP failover mechanism for automatic load balancing and
failover.
DHCP servers in a cluster are generally located in different
subnets than DHCP clients. In addition, because the servers
manage several scopes with thousands of IP addresses based
on physical and logical topologies of an enterprise or carrier
network, these DHCP servers are not directly reachable by the
DHCP clients using DHCP packets which are broadcast-based.
DHCP Relay Agents are helper services residing on client
networks that help facilitate communication between the DHCP
clients and servers over routed networks where broadcast trafc
is not possible.
For this test setup, one or more test ports is required to send
multiple DHCP requests to the server.
2006 by Ixia
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DHCP RA
L3 Switch
DHCP Failover
Server Cluster
Ixia Port
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DHCP
Client
DHCP Discover
(Broadcast)
DHCP Discover
(Unicast to Server)
DHCP Offer
(Broadcast)
DHCP Offer
(Unicast to RA)
DHCP Request
(Broadcast)
DHCP ACK
(Broadcast)
L3 Switch
with RA
Capability
DHCP Request
(Unicast to Server)
DHCP ACK
(Unicast to RA)
DHCP
Server
2006 by Ixia
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DHCP RA
L3 Switch
DHCP Failover
Server Cluster
Ixia Port
2006 by Ixia
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Input Parameters
Parameter
Description
Client Conguration
Client Network
Client Command-list
Test Ports
DHCP Server(s)
Test Objective
2006 by Ixia
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Methodology
1. Congure the DHCP server with one or more lease scopes.
This conguration is contingent on the test network. If one
or more VLANs is used to classify different groups of DHCP
clients, several lease scopes must be set up to accommodate
the DHCP clients. Refer to the Input Parameters table.
2. Congure any network devices to forward DHCP broadcast
packets to an upstream DHCP server. This process may
include enabling helper services on a per-port or per-VLAN
basis. Additionally, if using the RA capability included with
the test tool, a trusted mode of operation may need to be
enabled on the switch to forward such packets.
3. Set up the emulated DHCP client network appropriately.
Congure the DHCP clients to use one or more VLAN tags
per test port. A trunk-port, for example, supports several
VLAN tags. This conguration must match the lease scope
and network switch conguration.
4. Congure the emulated DHCP client trafc. Refer to the Input
Parameters table.
5. Set up the test objective to determine the maximum number of
sustained users.
The following client-side parameters can be determined
iteratively to optimize the performance of the DHCP server:
retransmission of packets based on the initial packet timeout,
# of retransmissions, # of Mandatory and Optional options to
include in the DHCP Discover packets, and Wait/Think times
between commands to control the rate of trafc to the server.
Consider that the Objective of this test is to determine the
maximum number of sustained users supported by the server.
For this reason, the rate of arrival of packets at the server
does not necessarily need to be high. This will allow for more
sustained users at a lower transaction rate.
Adjust the parameters to determine the maximum client
capacity. This metric is the threshold reached when there are
no timeouts, no retransmissions, nor packets losses on the
server-side.
2006 by Ixia
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Results
The objective of this test was to determine the maximum client
handling capacity. To determine this, the test was run iteratively
to reach the operating limit of the server. At this limit, the server
was able to sustain a steady ow of DHCP requests without
packet loss.
The result of three test-runs is presented here to characterize the
performance of the DHCP server. The results illustrate the raw
performance of the server and more importantly provide insight
into the tradeoffs of achieving high client capacity.
Run 1 No errors
150 users (cycled through the command-list)
Users ramp-up rate: 3 users/second
Request timeout: 5 seconds, No retransmissions
Inter-command wait interval: 4 seconds
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DHCP RA
L3 Switch
DHCP Failover
Server Cluster
Ixia Port
2006 by Ixia
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Input Parameters
Parameter
Description
Client Conguration
Client Network
Client Command-list
Test Ports
DHCP Server(s)
Test Objective
2006 by Ixia
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Methodology
1. Congure the DHCP server with one or more lease scopes.
This conguration is contingent on the test network. If one
or more VLAN is used to classify different groups of DHCP
clients, the conguration will require several lease scopes
to be set up to accommodate the DHCP clients. Refer to the
Input Parameters table.
2. Congure any network device to forward DHCP broadcast
packets to an upstream DHCP server. This process may
include enabling helper services on a per-port or per-VLAN
basis. Additionally, if an RA capability is included with the
test tool, a trusted mode of operation may need to be
enabled on the switch to forward such packets.
3. Set up the emulated DHCP client network appropriately.
Congure the DHCP clients to use one or more VLAN tags
per test port. For example, a trunk-port supports several VLAN
tags. This conguration must match the lease scope and
network switch conguration.
4. Congure the emulated DHCP client trafc. Refer to the Input
Parameters table.
5. Set up the test objective to determine the maximum
transactions per second.
Consider that the Objective on this test is to determine the
maximum transaction rate. Therefore, it is not necessarily
important to achieve high client capacity. A typical number of
clients with a high rate of IP address assignment and renewal
may be sufcient to overwhelm the DHCP server.
Adjust the parameters to determine the maximum transactionsper-seconds without errors or packet loss.
2006 by Ixia
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Results
The objective of this test was to determine the maximum
transactions-per-second that the DHCP could handle. To
determine this, the overall user count was not deemed as relevant
as the steady-state arrival rate (transaction rate) being processed
successfully by the server.
The result of three test-runs is presented here to characterize the
performance of the DHCP server.
RUN 1
RUN 2
RUN 3
Number of Users
95
95
95
10
40
10
# of Retransmissions
The table below is a condensed report from all three test runs
that contains request rates and failures due to timeouts.
IxLoad Report
RUN 1
RUN 2
RUN 3
14.18
20.73
25.25
377.64
490.85
631.11
9.86
12.58
16.57
4529.18
6657.42
8118.95
3191.20
4121.62
5399.71
Avg Throuhput/s
7720.39
10779
13518.46
DHCP DISCOVER
33.32
63.92
50.29
DHCP REQUEST
48.79
78.23
73.64
VALID IPs
525
588
892
565
848
1005
129
53
525
713
937
125
45
DISCOVER Failures
REQUEST Total Packets
REQUEST Failures
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Setup
The set up will require at least one Ixia test port to generate
stateful DHCP trafc. The conguration presented here is
indicative of a typical large-scale DHCP server deployment
and may not reect any specic use-case. Refer to Topology
illustration below to set up the test appropriately.
Ixia DHCP Clients
DHCP RA
L3 Switch
DHCP Failover
Server Cluster
Ixia Port
2006 by Ixia
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Input Parameters
Parameter
Description
Client Conguration
Client Network
Client Command-list
Test Ports
DHCP Server(s)
Test Objective
2006 by Ixia
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Methodology
1. Congure the DHCP server with one or more lease scopes.
This conguration is contingent on the test network. If one
or more VLAN is used to classify different groups of DHCP
clients, the server will require several lease scopes to be
setup to accommodate the DHCP clients. Refer to the Input
Parameters table.
2. Congure any network devices to forward DHCP broadcast
packets to an upstream DHCP server. This process may
include enabling helper services on a per-port or per-VLAN
basis. Additionally, if using the RA capability included with
the test tool, a trusted mode of operation may need to be
enabled on the switch to forward such packets.
3. Set up the emulated DHCP client network appropriately.
Congure the DHCP clients to use one or more VLAN tags
per test port. For example, a trunk-port supports several VLAN
tags. This conguration must match the lease scope and
network switch conguration.
4. Congure the emulated DHCP client trafc. Refer to the Input
Parameters table.
5. Set up the test objective to determine the maximum number of
sustained users.
Adjust the parameters to determine the optimal client
response time. The most effective method is to start the
iterative process that yields the maximum client capability
and work down to increase the transactions-per-second rate
so that there is a mutual compromise between the two, which
produces an acceptable level of client response time.
2006 by Ixia
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Results
This test was set up to determine the optimal client response time
with an acceptable level of performance.
The following test runs were considered to determine the optimal
client response time:
RUN 1
RUN 2
RUN 3
150
250
100
# of Retransmissions
Number of Users
The graph below shows the DHCP Discover response times for
three test runs:
2006 by Ixia
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DHCP RA
L3 Switch
DHCP Failover
Server Cluster
Ixia Port
2006 by Ixia
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Input Parameters
Parameter
Description
Client Conguration
Client Network
Client Command-list
Test Ports
DHCP Server(s)
Test Objective
2006 by Ixia
p.26
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Methodology
1. Congure the DHCP server with one or more lease scopes.
This conguration is contingent on the test network. If one
or more VLAN is used to classify different groups of DHCP
clients, the server will require several lease scopes to be
setup to accommodate the DHCP clients. Refer to the Input
Parameters table. The DHCP failover and cluster setup is
vendor-specic and not covered in this test. At a minimum,
ensure that there is a heartbeat between the clustered
systems or the failover services between the servers.
2. Congure any network devices to forward DHCP broadcast
packets to an upstream DHCP server. This process may
include enabling helper services on a per-port or per-VLAN
basis. Additionally, if using the RA capability included with
the test tool, a trusted mode of operation may need to be
enabled on the switch to forward such packets.
3. Set up the emulated DHCP client network appropriately.
Congure the DHCP clients to use one or more VLAN tags
per test port. For example, a trunk-port supports several VLAN
tags. This conguration must match the lease scope and
network switch conguration.
4. Congure the emulated DHCP client trafc. Refer to the Input
Parameters table.
5. Set up the test objective to perform under normal load
conditions. Normal load condition refers to typical load
conditions for the DHCP server to handle.
6. Run the test. Perform an unscheduled system shutdown of the
Primary DHCP server (or perform any other failure condition).
The assessment of this action must be monitored closely.
Look for statistics that indicate how well the failover was
implemented and if there was any noticeable service
degradation during the failover. Refer to the Results section
for analysis.
2006 by Ixia
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Results
The objective of this test was to characterize the DHCP server(s)
performance working under degraded conditions. It was
expected that the performance of the DHCP server in servicing
requests would be lower, and the client response time would
increase as the server was required to process more requests
than if it was working under normal operating conditions.
To characterize how resilient the DHCP servers are during a
failure condition, several statistics must be monitored during this
critical condition:
Number of DHCP requests sent to the servers that failed due to
timeouts
Number of DHCP request retransmissions due to timeout
conditions
Incorrect leases offered to clients if the DHCP servers are not
synchronized before the failure
Duplicate addresses detected on the client-side because of
uncommitted transactions on the Primary server results in out-ofsync Backup database
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Notes:
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About Ixia
Ixia is a leading provider of performance test systems
for IP-based infrastructure and services. Its highly
scalable solutions generate, capture, characterize, and
emulate network and application trafc, establishing
denitive performance and conformance metrics
of network devices or systems under test. Ixias test
systems are used by Network and Telephony Equipment
Manufacturers, Semiconductor Manufacturers, Service
Providers, Governments, and Enterprises to validate
the functionality and reliability of complex IP networks,
devices, and applications. Ixias Triple Play test systems
address the growing need to test voice, video, and
data services and network capability under realworld conditions. Ixias vision is to be the worlds
pre-eminent provider of solutions to enable testing
of next generation IP Triple Play networks. Ixias test
systems utilize a wide range of industry-standard
interfaces, including Ethernet, SONET, ATM, and
wireless connectivity, and are distinguished by their
performance, accuracy, reliability, and adaptability to
the industrys constant evolution.
Contact Ixia
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