Now you can get information about file content without performing the actual replay.
For example, it can tell you how many requests in your files, and how long it will take to replay them.
### Reducing CPU context switching and number of goroutines.
Packet capture and packet processing now use only two goroutines which helps to minimize CPU context switches. Spawning too many goroutines is harmful here.
### Optimized packet capture - allocated memory only when required, and only for data which is used
Using ZeroCopy methods from libpcap library to avoid unnecessary allocations. Now memory gets allocated ONLY for the valid packets, and only for the packets which have the data. E.g. no SYN/FIN packets are used now. Additionally we now use `sync.Pool` for re-using packet objects, which helps to re-use already allocated memory.
### Simplification and optimization of request/response detection
There is no SYN/FIN packets anymore etc. Now only packet payload is used to detect start and end of the packet. More over payload detection now does not require generating a total “message” buffer, and works with individual packet payloads.
Message payloads now concatenated from packets only in the end when message is dispatched. Also, before checking if message is complete, added additional check if all received packets in the valid order, e.g. if their SEQ is valid, and no packets are missing.
Reworked chunked encoding validation, and now it does not need expensive operation of re-calculating all the chunks. Now it “trust” that client gives valid chunk body, check if packets are in the right order (e.g. SEQ match), and checks if message ends with the right suffix. All is done with 0 allocations.
Parsing all Headers using `proto.GetHeaders` was proved to be very slow. Now we only parse the headers we need(and do it only once).
Packets gets matched together using ACK, which on high RPS removed chances of duplicating IDs. Additionally, even if packets are received out of order, now it will properly sort them, before dispatching the message.
### Changes in ID generation algorithm
Message ID generation and relations between request and response IDs is fully rewritten. Responses now do not have to lookup for request data in order to get the same ID. ID no rely on the fact that SEQ of the first packet of the response should be the same as ACK of the request. If previously Message ID contained random values, like current timestamp, now it has a consistent algorithm which is based on TCP stream id (SrcPort + DstPort + SrcIP/DstIP) and current ACK/SEQ number (to distinguish multiple messages within the same stream).
### BPF filter optimizations
When tracking response it now uses a more accurate BPF rule to filter only needed traffic.
### Misc
The packet code is now fully moved to tcp/Packet, so packet processing done only once in one place.
TCP output now has a 5 second timeout, and has a proper Close method.
Fully switching to go modules and removing vendoring.
// PluginReader is an interface for input plugins
type PluginReader interface {
PluginRead() (msg *Message, err error)
}
// PluginWriter is an interface for output plugins
type PluginWriter interface {
PluginWrite(msg *Message) (n int, err error)
}
### performance
- handling of the very big packet(any size that can be buffered)
- speeding up TCP sessions by using message hints: Added **proto.HasFullPayload** that helps to validate the entire HTTP request, it supports `Chunked` encoding too! Added **proto.HasRequestTitle** and **proto.HasResponseTitle** for validating the beginning of HTTP request. Those methods are used `input_raw.go` with `TCP`.
- supports Keep-Alive: the above functions helps to support keep-alive
### Packaging
- **capture:** engines(capture/doc.go)
- **tcp:** tcp message parser (tcp/doc.go)
### benchmarking
- **capture.BenchmarkPcapDump:** the benchmarks regarding dumping packets in a pcap file
- **capture.BenchmarkPcapFile:** the benchmarks of reading packets from a pcap file
- **capture.BenchmarkPcap:** the benchmarks of parsing packets from the loopback interface with pcap handles
- **proto.BenchmarkHasFullPayload:**: benchmarking this function which validates the HTTP payload
- **tcp.BenchmarkPacketParseAndSort:** benchmarks of parsing and sorting packets
- **tcp.BenchmarkMessageParserWithoutHint:** benchmarks of message reasembling by using `SYN` and `FIN` flag
- **tcp.BenchmarkMessageParserWithHint:** benchmarks of message reasembling by using `proto.HasRequestTitle` and `proto.HasFullPayload` flag
### issues
see linked issues
### tests
- fixed input raw and engine tests
**Most of the changed of the files, was about using functionalities of** `tcp` **and** `capture` **in existing functionalities**
This provides the ability to have a maximum number of workers, yet still allow scaling down. The scaling down is important to stop timeouts happening with under-utilised workers.
Note, although the code has workers_min, workers_max, the settings option --output-http-workers has remained and becomes the "max" value. I did this to hopefully not break too much for others. The min will default to 1, so users will see dynamic scaling unless they also set min to be the same. This will probably benefit them as they will avoid potential timeouts when the traffic reduces. But something to be aware of.
