New method for interactive TCP traffic replay based on balance-checking between transmitted and received packets

Interactive network traffic replay is the newest method for testing and evaluation of network devices such as Firewalls, IPSes, routers, switches, etc. Currently state-checking method is used for interactive TCP traffic replay. This paper proposes a new method for interactive TCP traffic replay which is based on the balance status between transmitted and received packets. By checking the balance conditions before sending out TCP packets, the method can significantly reduce the cost of state-checking and enhance the replay performance. The authors made a comparison on the differences of replay methods when introducing the balance mechanism. The efficiency of the method is also investigated and evaluated from aspects of a single TCP session, multi-session traffic, packet losses and latency. Experimental results show that the method outperforms the original state-checking method when replaying actual TCP traffics.