simulating dhcp requests?

[David W. Hankins]

On Fri, Sep 15, 2006 at 10:17:25AM -0400, Jiann-Ming Su wrote:
> Is there a way to use dhclient to simulate a bunch of dhcp requests?
> I'm trying to do a load test on our dhcp configuration.  But, dhclient
> want to bind to an existing interface.  The other way I've briefly
> considered is to generate the dhcprequest through the existing
> interface and using linux netfilter to spoof random MAC addresses.
> Thanks for any tips.

One of the tactics I found useful for loadtesting to find performance
bottlenecks in our code (there are a few) was to hack the DHCP /server/
interface code to repetetively inject a crafted DISCOVER and REQUEST
packet that I knew would work.

I found what I learned from this more useful than what I would have
learned if there were unanswered questions about how much traffic
might reasonably have been delivered for processing.

That is, this does not stress the network delivery, which is a problem
if you are trying to find problems in an installed system, but is an
advantage if you're trying to tune everything behind that.

-- 
David W. Hankins	"If you don't do it right the first time,
Software Engineer		you'll just have to do it again."
Internet Systems Consortium, Inc.	-- Jack T. Hankins