How do you test a network stack for outbound traffic?

Question

I'm in the middle of developing an embedded network appliance and am thinking about how to test how it would work in different environments, in regards to the traffic flowing on that network. Is their any tools or recommended ways to go in this matter?

The following are things I have come up with to test but don't know how:

• How does it handle traffic intended for someone else?
• How do I stress test it? I would like to see the availability of the rest of the appliance e.g. in case of a denial of service attack.
• How does it handle errornous packets?

Answer 1

(I find it very strange that other answers are all about security. I could not find any indication from the OP about a security requirement)

Try googling "Test Network Stack", at the time of writing it found these:

• https://code.google.com/p/packetdrill/ - no source code changes since 1st May 2014
• https://cwrap.org/ - likely no ethernet support, only for testing xNIX applications
• http://isic.sourceforge.net/ - has security application, but has IP Stack testing in mind. Has a low version number, but you're using it to test, not for production, so that shouldn't matter.
• http://iwl.com/protocol-testing/ip - Commercial device costing up to $5k. I like how they've listed their tests.
• https://fedorahosted.org/lnst/ - appears to be the best option. Focuses on bridge, team, bond, VLAN etc, but also for ordinary network devices.

Googling for network stack security testing would be complimentary, but I wouldn't think as comprehensive as, software purpose built for testing network stack functional compliance.

Answer 2

Traffic intended for someone else- at what level Ethernet or IP?

IXIA (IxChariot and few hardware solutions),Spirent (SmartBits) and others sell test equipment that you can easily use to simulate wrong addressing, errors, flooding, different traffic shapes etc. The key question is- what is your budget ?

Answer 3

A vulnerability scanning tool such as Nessus can be used to send all manner of dodgy network traffic to a device.

Nessus is free for private use but needs a license for professional use. There's also OpenVAS which is free (GPL).

Answer 4

Try the browsermob proxy:

http://opensource.webmetrics.com/browsermob-proxy/