The TOFFEE Project :: Documentation

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.

TOFFEE Fudge is a simple intuitive Network Packet Generator which can be used to create custom test synthetic Network Packets and can be used in various applications such as networking research, network infrastructure troubleshooting, ethical hacking, as a network software development tool and so on.

The TOFFEE Project website is hosted on Inmotion Hosting. And so I am looking for alternate hosting provider to build my first CDN node. My plan is to make multiple sub-domains of my website such as cdn1.the-toffee-project.org, cdn2.the-toffee-project.org and point each of this corresponding subdomain(s) to various alternative web hosting servers geographically spread across the world. Sometimes choosing the same vendor for multiple CDN nodes may result multiple servers existing in the data-center. And this becomes an issue if there is some catastrophic network disaster.

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.

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.

Seems there are couple of Inmotionhosting servers are down. And one of the server includes The TOFFEE Project website hosted server. I was in touch with the Inmotionhosting team trying to resolve the same. I found a unique issue that all my website files are intact and the Joomla database. But the Joomla database tables are completely wiped out and missing. Besides there is also a sort of upgrade going on in their servers. Luckily I have the most recent backup of the entire website.

If you want to deploy TOFFEE along with a web-proxy cache (such as Squid Proxy) you can deploy the same as shown below. TOFFEE does not cache files. TOFFEE does packet level network optimization. So if you want caching your web content you can use transparent mode web-proxy cache intercepting your WAN links. A web-proxy may reduce amount of data being processed (optimized) within these TOFFEE devices and so reduce the CPU overheads and improve its performance.

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.

When you choose to use your Raspberry Pi device as your IoT based remote weather station or if you are building Linux kernel (like kernel compilation) within the same, you need a good uninterrupted power source (UPS). But if you are using it on site or in some research camping location you can choose to power your Raspberry Pi device with your custom off-grid solar power source.

Network Packet Queue or Buffer - Packet Flow Control, Fragmentation and MTU