News and Updates

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.

I have a huge repository (or collection) of sample Wireshark packet capture files for reference. I use them extensively for research and development of TOFFEE as well to understand various protocol PDUs and protocol standards. I personally collected various test captures via Wireshark during my test and experimental research setup during the course of TOFFEE development. Say if you are a student and learning Networking and or say VoIP data and VoIP packets, you can analyse my VoIP sample Wireshark captures. Or in other case assume you are doing some quick research (or development) and want to refer few handful of VoIP packets then you can download and analyse my sample packet capture files.

TOFFEE-Butterscotch is an open-source software which can be used to save and optimize your Internet/WAN bandwidth. Unlike TOFFEE (and TOFFEE-DataCenter) TOFFEE-Butterscotch is a non peer-to-peer (and asymmetric) network optimization solution. This makes TOFFEE-Butterscotch an ideal tool for all Home and SOHO users.

Ever since after I launched my new The TOFFEE Project website on 1-May'2016, I can see there is a steep increase in traffic. Soon after the launch when I monitored its Alexa rankings it was reporting about 12 Million or so. But once it is getting more and more traffic the Alexa rankings shot up and now currently it shows around 2 Million (as on 22-July-2016). Alexa is an excellent tool to monitor your overall website global ranking and indirectly its performance. Unlike Google Analytics which is bound one or other way into Google's SEO. Alexa gives you a second opinion about your website's growth.

The TOFFEE Project :: TOFFEE-Mocha :: Linux Open-Source WAN Emulator

As a research experiment I replaced my Intel Core i7 5820K desktop PC with my Intel Celeron 1037U Mini-PC as my everyday desktop system. This is an attempt to reduce my overall monthly power consumption. As well an attempt to do feasibility tests and research to know how far Mini PC will dominate the market in future and to study the real potential of Mini PCs.

TOFFEE TOFFEE Data-Center is specifically meant for Data Center, Cluster Computing, HPC applications. TOFFEE is built in Linux Kernel core. This makes it inflexible to adapt according to the hardware configuration. It does sequential packet processing and does not scale up well in large multi-core CPU based systems (such as Intel Xeon servers, Core i7 Extreme Desktop systems,etc). Apart from this since it is kernel based, if there is an issue in kernel, it may crash entire system. This becomes a challenge for any carrier grade equipment (CGE) hardware build.

There are various techniques with which one can optimize their WAN Network Data. Any long distance communication can be considered as WAN Network. A decade ago any network connecting two countries, considered as a WAN network, and a network within a city as MAN and soon. But these days in general any long distance communication is considered as WAN Network. Such as your Mobile communication networks, Satellite networks, Space Networks (Deep space networks), Trans-Atlantic cable networks, etc.

VPN Networks may degrade network performance due to various packet processing overheads such as encryption and by adding extra network protocol header(s) (such as IPv4/IPv6, IPSec, etc). This may inflate near MTU sized packets and causes excessive packet fragmentation. Here are the few examples of packet processing involved in a VPN (or a VPN like) Tunnel. With TOFFEE you can optimize these packets even before they get processed on to a VPN device. TOFFEE optimizes packet contents (application payload and transport headers) so that these TOFFEE optimized packets when they get processed by VPN devices (or VPN software stack) they may never need further packet fragmentation. Here is a deployment scenario of TOFFEE with VPN devices.

Here is a list of TOFFEE-DataCenter features supported. TOFFEE-DataCenter currently supports some of the important features such as loss-less network data compression, Packet Deduplication (protocols/applications supported), Application Acceleration, TCP Acceleration, dynamic MTU optimization, data packaging, hardware offload support, etc.

Here is my home lab monthly power-consumption readings for research. This will help to measure and monitor the overall power usage and assess the power requirements. This will help me in future purchases such as UPS, battery upgrades and so on. And as well remove replace old obsolete hardware with new less power-consuming devices.