HOME 》 The TOFFEE Project :: TOFFEE :: WAN Optimization

Raspberry Pi is often used as a single board computer for applications such as IoT, hobby projects, DIY, education aid, research and prototyping device. But apart from these applications Raspberry Pi can be used for real-world applications such as in making a full-fledged networking devices. Raspberry Pi is a single board ARM based hardware which is why it is also classified as ARM based SoC. Since it is ARM based it is highly efficient, tiny form-factor and lower in power consumption with moderate computational power. This will allow it to work several hours on emergency battery backup power supply such as low-cost domestic UPS and or some renewable energy source, which is a prerequisite for a typical networking device.

Today I completed doing all the changes which are meant for the new upcoming TOFFEE-Mocha release. I have increased the resolution and the range of all factor variables. Instead 1 to 10 range now they have a range of 1 to 30. Unlike before the value 1 means it is lot more intense (or in some cases less intense) and the uppermost value 30 means lot less intense (or in some cases lot intense).

Here is my video article on Network Latency in WAN Networks (such as long distance Satellite links, etc) and how you can optimize the same to achieve better network performance.

Today I finally completed building my own private CDN. As I discussed so far in my earlier topics (Building my own CDN), I want to custom build the same step-by-step from scratch. And I don't want to for now use/buy third-party CDN subscriptions from Akamai, CloudFlare, Limelight, etc as I discussed earlier.

When you build a WAN Optimization device with TOFFEE the entire packet processing (data optimization) takes place in software layer or in other words more precisely Operating System kernel space. However if you have any compression or encryption hardware accelerator hardware card the parts of the TOFFEE packet processing modules can be offloaded to hardware layer and thus improving its efficiency.

Earlier the TOFFEE is intended to work on IoT devices, Satellite Networks, branch office/SOHO deployments. In most cases the users may deploy just one or couple of TOFFEE devices per site. But in the case of TOFFEE-DataCenter, users can scale-up deploying the same in multiple servers in a sort of distributed cluster computing scenario. Besides the core TOFFEE-DataCenter components (such as packet processing engine/framework), I need to do lot of changes in its Graphical User Interface (GUI) too to address these new requirements.

Here is a complete log of my lab battery purchase, service record which I maintain in Google drive. These I use for my home (or my family generic use) as well as a part of my home lab. I maintain a detailed log this way to monitor the failure rate of these batteries. This will allow me to select a specific brand/model which has higher success rate and to monitor any premature failure/expiry. The service log helps me to monitor and schedule the next service routine so that I can maintain these batteries in tip-top condition.

Demo TOFFEE_DataCenter WAN Optimization VM (in VirtualBox) Test Setup

Here is my power-consumption measurements of various devices deployed within my home lab. I measured via my kill-a-watt sort of power-meter which is fairly reliable and accurate. I checked its accuracy with various standard load such as Philips LED laps and other constant power-consuming devices to make sure that the power-meter is precise.