Discrete event simulator for asymmetric bandwidth network simulation - network-programming

I am wondering if there exists any discrete event simulator that can simulate a tcp/ip network with asymmetric links. I'm trying to test extreme asymmetries and see how the network performs. Here is a repo for a simpy library that I've found for a great tcp simulator however, the links are symmetric. Simpy is preferred but if there is anything else please let me know. I'm trying to see if there's anything else out there that I might have missed before I try to embark on creating my own network simulator in simpy.
Any help is welcome
Thank you

Related

looking for alternative solution than IPFW for slowing down an internet connection

I need to slow down (simulate bad) internet connection, I found some documentation where it was achieved by "ipfw pipe" command , the thing is that in latest MAC OS versions , ipfw was deprecated (and removed)...
I was wondering if there are any alternative to the ipfw API ?
Does anyone know how latest Network Link Conditioner achieves it?
The original previous way which enabled to slow down an internet connection :
sudo ipfw pipe 1 config bw 56Kbit/s delay 200 plr 0.2
and to clear the pipe :
sudo ipfw delete 1
Thanks.
I don't know much about Mac OS (I use Linux myself), but I'll give this a shot.
A bunch of digging established that ipfw seems unavailable, as you say.
I was also unable to find a way to use the Network Link Conditioner from the command line. Everything should be usable from the command line, so that's stupid.
One work around would be to try to access the NLC from within AppleScript. The following will get you started on toggling the NLC:
property thePane : "com.apple.Network-Link-Conditioner"
tell application "System Preferences"
activate
set the current pane to pane id thePane
--delay 2
end tell
---
tell application "System Events"
tell application process "System Preferences"
try
click ((checkboxes of window "Network Link Conditioner") whose description is "enable switch")
on error
click ((checkboxes of window "Network Link Conditioner") whose description is "enable switch")
end try
end tell
end tell
I think that you can run a script from the terminal with osascript <SCRIPT>.
As an alternative, Charles Proxy is a pay-to-use program that can be used to perform throttling, provided you can convince the software you are testing to connect to the proxy's port rather than directly to the internet. Maybe there are free proxy solutions out there somewhere?
Perhaps Squid would work in that regard. SquidMan seems to be an easy-ish way to install it for Mac. It looks as though DelayPools and or Client Bandwidth Limits might be useful for simulating a low speed connection, though I can't find evidence of people having used them for such.
I found several solutions that might work. They come from some old threads, but they might help:
How to simulate slow internet connections on the mac
Apple has made a very handy official tool to slow down the network connections on you Mac for testing purposes.
The Network Link Conditioner preference is a free download from within Xcode (for Lion and later OS). Additionally, iOS has similar function accessible from within Xcode and iOS 6 or later.
How do I simulate a bad Wi-Fi connection on my iPad?
There are a few ways you can do this, depending on your situation:
Move further away from your router. While this may seem a bit obvious, I realize that it isn't always possible while testing/debugging (for example, if you are working on a desktop computer).
Put aluminum foil around the router and/or antenna. This will (partially) block some or all of the radio signals by creating a makeshift Faraday cage. The results you get will depend on the strength of your router signal, distance from the router, and other environmental factors.
Set your router's wireless signal power to a lower setting. The method for doing this is different for each router, so you will have to look at the user guide for instructions on how to do this.
Slow down internet for iOS simulator
You can set the network to slow characteristic by testing on devices. Go to Settings -> Developer Settings -> Network Link Conditioner -> Enable. This is for iPhone/iPad running iOS 6
I don't know if the last one you can still do.
I've used many methods in the past for slowing down network connections, among them:
performing a parallel download of some massive Linux ISO file;
physically pulling out the Ethernet cable (at one point, I actually toyed with the idea of building a push-button device that would sit between two cat5 cables and do this without having to physically disconnect the whole cable).
using ifconfig eth0 down ; sleep 1 ; ifconfig eth0 up.
Hopefully one or more of those methods will help.
If you're looking to slow down your network connection because you're doing testing/profiling work, one option is to get a specific device that can create network latency/noise.
For example Apposite Tech's mini2 WAN emulator allows you to change values for bandwidth and packet loss. You can roll your own device too using something like: http://wanem.sourceforge.net/ . It just depends on your needs, time and budget.

How to monitor packets using Snort features?

I want to create a network intrusion detection system for iOS application. The main function is to allow the user to select a home network (maybe prompt them to simply enter the IP address only) and to be able to monitor the packets and if there is anything suspicious- we need to alert user via push notification or email. i wanted to use the features and functions of Snort, an open source network intrusion detection system.
Any Suggestions,Sample code ?! Where to start?
VM's do not have native hardware access, which is necessary for monitor mode. Maybe IOMMU PCI passthrough or bridged devices might work. It is probable that it is possible to compile the iOS kernel with a module that works for the wireless nic. I don't think it's a proprietary chip specific to apple, because a chip with multie technology capabilities in RF wouldn't be cost effective qt all. I'm just not sure if the filesystem blocks access in the OS framework or whatever. I have tried to compile linux/iOS ARM packages natively in the shell with the aircrack-ng source, but have not had any luck. Maybe someone would have better luck actually cross-compiling a package and sideloading it somehow.
I don't think this is possible for multiple reasons:
You wouldn't be able to compile snort for iOS.
In order to run snort you have to have the interface (NIC) in promiscuous mode, which I really don't think you can do on an iOS device (iPhone, iPad, etc) but I have never really looked into it, but Apple probably locks this down and restricts this for security purposes so if you could do it you'd likely have to jail-break the device first. It's not even possible to put the wifi card in an Apple laptop into monitor mode, which is similar.
There are a lot of dependencies for snort, most importantly the DAQ. You would probably only be able to monitor the wifi interface (even this might not be possible), not the interface used for the cellular network as this is probably a different daq than standard Ethernet nics.
This very likely is not possible on iOS, if it is it would be VERY difficult to pull off and even if you did the use case isn't really good. Even if you could get a daq for the cellular card, I don't know if promiscuous mode even exists and if it did all of the traffic on the cellular network is encrypted, so inspecting this with snort would be pointless. If you could do it for the wifi traffic it's probably not worth the effort honestly, especially since almost all traffic nowadays is encrypted, you'd have to decrypt it first, which certainly isn't possible to do.
In the view of Johnjg12's comments, I am wondering about your goal. If you want to make a NIDS, you can make it OS independent, anyway. If you want to consider only HIDS that monitors packet destined to it, we don't need it to be in promiscuous mode (a comment to Johgj12's response). so, now it is something to do with Snort on iOS. I am wondering if we can do it on a VM and then turning its promiscuous mode? Having said that I came across a link: https://www.securemac.com/macosxsnort.php

How to troubleshoot CAN bus communication

I am trying to connect ICP CON i-7565 (USB<->CAN interface) to a custom made device (supporting CAN2.0B, proved to work with PCL-841 card) Although I think I have configured BAUD and acceptance code/mask correctly I can see CAN no messages coming from the device (ICP provides a tool that should allow me to send and receive CAN messages).
I am new to CAN bus so I appreciate any help regarding how to identify the problem.
I-7565 might be wrong interface for me, I might have misconfigured it, or it is simply broken. Or I am just doing something wrong out of my ignorance. I don't think anyone can help me with my specific problem, so I am rather asking for general information on how are problems with CAN bus identified and analyzed. In TCP/IP for example, you would call ping, you'd recheck your ip and gateway settings etc. What do you do for CAN communication?
Additional info:
OS: Win7 64bit
connector: DB-9 with standard wiring (2,3,7)
Finally I tried to work with different USB<->CAN interface from different manufacturer and it worked like a charm. My old interface was either broken or incompatible for reasons unknown. While working on this problem I learned couple of things about CAN bus and so now I share what I think was the right answer to my original question: How to troubleshoot CAN bus communication?
read manual to your USB-CAN interface
install driver of your interface device and make sure it is working (check device manager, depending on the type of your device you will see new COM port added or new USB controller )
your device should be shipped with it's own test/analysis software (they might call it utility or similar), run it and check if it can connect to your device
CAN communication uses three wires that are referred to as High, Low and Ground and is usually connected with DB-9 connectors where High is linked to pin n. 7, Low to pin n. 2 and Ground to pin n. 3 or 5 - make sure this is connected correctly on both your USB interface and CAN device you want to communicate with
set properties of your connection, these are most of all: CAN type (2.0A or 2.0B) BAUD rate, Acceptance Code and Acceptance Mask
if you've done all of this and still you can see no CAN messages arriving in your utility program, check with a different USB-CAN interface or find some other way to test if your device is actually emitting CAN messages and your USB interface is in fact able to receive them. (this was actually my case)

How to fake network connection type changes in iOS simulator?

I would like to test my iOS application with all the network conditions possible, including quality of the connection (offline, poor, good) and carrier (WiFi, 3G). For the former, others have already suggested using the Network Link Conditioner, e.g. here:
iPhone simulator - simulate 3G connection
which is just fine for the bandwidth and packet loss, but unfortunately it isn't able to change the carrier type that is reported to the simulator. So I'm looking for a not-so-hacky way of simulating changes in the carrier type. I said not-so-hacky because I have already come up with a hacky solution which, moreover, is incomplete as it can only deceive code which explicitly depends on Apple's famous Reachability module. (Though if anyone is interested, I can post it here.)
Is there a way to hijack/tamper with what the SystemConfiguration API reports?
I use the excellent OHHTTPStubs library to test these things.
You even specify the types of connections you want to mock and their speed. And it's easy to create mock network returns in the tests. Which means you're not testing across an actual network so your tests are more determinate.
Use the Network Link Conditioner that the Xcode tools provides
install it using this: Installing Apple's Network Link Conditioner Tool

iOS virtual button to Arduino

What would be the best way of sending a signal from an iPad to an Arduino?
I am trying to use XBee, with iPad and Arduino to send a wireless signal.
I want to make a big red virtual button on an iPad that, when pressed, turns on an LED on the Arduino.
I am a total newbie when it comes to iOS, but OK with Arduino and XBee.
So I'm not sure if I understood correctly, but in my meaning there is only one simple way to solve the problem:
Connect an XBee to a Computer and another to the Arduino. On the computer you launch a webserver, which will be accesible from the iPad over Safari. This server handles the clickes and writes to the XBee Com Port, for communication.
Here are some examples, people already made:
http://www.projectallusion.com/1/post/2009/11/iphone-controlled-solar-powered-arduino-tank.html
http://www.sparkfun.com/tutorials/152 (not with xbee, but you can implement that by yourself)
I know it's been a while but I just came across to this question and yesterday I was doing the exact same thing so I'll share the method I used and the source of it.
In order to set a LED on or off in an Arduino board from the iPad you really don't need anything more than a browser. This is of course if you have a way to connect that Arduino to the local network.
Today you have at least two options. The WiFi and the Ethernet shields. Once you have your Arduino board inside the network you can send the instructions (HIGH or LOW) to the board form the browser.
These are my two boards connected waiting to be plugged to the local network:
Of course, you'll have to code the board to process those instructions. There are many examples on how to configure network settings and state instructions:
If you have a bit of time and want to do something more elaborated you could create a simple app to graphically control the state of those LED(s).
Inside you'll basically do the same thing, create the URL command and send it to the Arduino IP but it'd look much nicer. If you integrate later more controls the sky in the limit.
My experiment is a combination of what I learned from this nice tutorial and some tips I've read here and there.
I hope it becomes also useful to someone else.
Cheers,
Since you need to use a network connection from the iPad, a possibly simpler way to do this would be to use a WiFi module on the Arduino to poll a web script, and have the iPad write a state (button press) to that web script.
There's a handy WiFi module called the RN-XV that's designed like an XBee. I wrote up two tutorials on it:
http://log.liminastudio.com/programming/getting-started-with-the-rn-xv-wifi-module-node-js
http://log.liminastudio.com/itp/physical-computing/using-the-rn-xv-wifi-module-as-a-remote-switch

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