PingPong

PingPong is a simple eBPF-based tool for measuring end-to-end latency in the Linux TCP/IP stack. A client and server exchange “ping-pong” messages over a TCP (SOCK_STREAM) socket while an eBPF program records timestamps inside the kernel at these points:

• Client stack: when the packet enters and leaves the client’s TCP/IP layers
• Network: time in flight on the wire
• Server stack: when the packet enters and leaves the server’s TCP/IP layers

Once the run is complete, PingPong writes all raw timestamps to a CSV file and then uses a Python script to generate a cumulative distribution function (CDF) plot and calculate percentile breakdowns for each component.

How It Works

1. Server startup
   • Binds and listens on a TCP port.
2. Client setup
   • Connects to the server.
   • You specify:
     • --size <bytes>: payload size of each ping
     • --count <number>: total number of ping-pong exchanges
3. Measurement loop (repeated count times)
   • Client sends a ping; eBPF timestamps at send-entry.
   • Server timestamps at receive-entry, then sends a pong back.
   • Client timestamps the returning packet at receive-entry.
4. Data analysis
   • The client collects all timestamps, matches send and receive events, and computes:
     • Client stack processing time
     • Network transit time
     • Server stack processing time
5. Output
   • Raw data in results.csv
   • A CDF plot drawn by scripts/plot_cdf.py (Python)
   • A summary report with percentile values for each latency component

Building and Running

make all

# On server
sudo ./pingpong-server --port 12345
sudo ./pingpong-ebpf --

# On client
sudo ./pingpong-client \
  --addr 192.0.2.10 \
  --port 12345 \
  --size 1024 \
  --count 10000 \
  --output results.csv

# Plot CDF
python3 scripts/plot_cdf.py \
  --input results.csv \
  --output latency_cdf.png

Dependencies

• Linux kernel ≥ 4.18 with eBPF support
• clang and llvm (to build the eBPF program)
• libbpf or another BPF loader
• Python ≥ 3.6 (for the CDF script)

License

MIT License — see LICENSE for details.