perfSONAR User Q&A and Other Discussion

["David A. J. Ripley" <>]

Timestamps are only meaningful when they include a timezone specification. :-)

</pet-peeve>

D.

On Jun 9, 2014, at 3:39 PM, Aaron Brown 
<>
 wrote:

> Hey Alan,
> 
> It’d probably be reasonable to add a flag to bwctl (and if possible the 
> tools it calls) to let the user configure the timestamp output. I’m not 
> positive if we’d want to go full-on timezone, but maybe something like 
> “—gmtime”, and have a flag in the protocol to say “i want all timestamps to 
> be output in gmtime” or something similar. I’m not sure if any of the other 
> tools spit out a timestamp (iperf3 might) so it may be a more “one-use” 
> flag, but I could see a use for it.
> 
> Cheers,
> Aaron
> 
> On Jun 5, 2014, at 4:00 PM, Alan Whinery 
> <>
>  wrote:
> 
>> I notice that owping returns the "first" and "last" timestamps as a 
>> zone-less time reference, apparently using local time on the sender as the 
>> reference.  This matters little when one is using the command line and 
>> getting a report for each of two tests, one each direction, in a terminal. 
>> A newer, emerging use-case, with one-way tests invoked through bwctl, 
>> possibly from a third host, possibly saving output to parse, can leave one 
>> with un-clear timestamps. 
>> 
>> Below is an example, with "bwping -T owamp", invoking tests between two 
>> bwctl hosts.  I just stumbled onto this because Ubuntu-armhf installed 
>> with local=GMT, and Raspbian installs with local=HST.  The tests were run 
>> one right after the other, but appear to have occurred 10 hours apart. 
>> 
>> The obvious fix would be to simply have owping always get time with 
>> gmtime() versus localtime() (or similar, I haven't looked at code). Of 
>> course, one would need to consider breaking existing 
>> owping-output-parsers.  Using localtime even be a flaw/oversight in owamp 
>> implementation, since it seems counter-intuitive for such things.
>> 
>> -Alan
>> 
>>> root@armv6l-b8-27-eb-c1-45-11:/etc/owampd#
>>>   bwping -T owamp -N 50 -i 0.1 -s hostA.hawaii.edu A AESKEY bob 
>>> /etc/bwctld/bwctld.keys -c hostB.hawaii.edu A AESKEY bob 
>>> /etc/bwctld/bwctld.keys
>>> bwping: 15 seconds until test results available
>>> 
>>> SENDER START
>>> bwctl: start_endpoint: 3610982384.435748
>>> bwctl: run_endpoint: receiver: hostB.hawaii.edu
>>> bwctl: run_endpoint: sender: hostA.hawaii.edu
>>> bwctl: exec_line: owping -t -c 50 -i 0.100000 [hostB.hawaii.edu]:4000
>>> bwctl: run_tool: tester: owamp
>>> bwctl: run_tool: receiver: hostB.hawaii.edu
>>> bwctl: run_tool: sender: hostA.hawaii.edu
>>> bwctl: start_tool: 3610982390.995661
>>> Approximately 8.1 seconds until results available
>>> 
>>> --- owping statistics from [hostA.hawaii.edu]:39037 to 
>>> [hostB.hawaii.edu]:45477 ---
>>> SID:    80ab5714d73b37f719eed0d875a81922
>>> first:  2014-06-05T18:39:52.181
>>> last:   2014-06-05T18:39:57.101
>>> 50 sent, 0 lost (0.000%), 0 duplicates
>>> one-way delay min/median/max = 0.196/0.3/0.462 ms, (err=0.414 ms)
>>> one-way jitter = 0.1 ms (P95-P50)
>>> Hops = 5 (consistently)
>>> no reordering
>>> 
>>> bwctl: stop_tool: 3610982400.301793
>>> bwctl: stop_endpoint: 3610982401.804053
>>> 
>>> SENDER END
>>> root@armv6l-b8-27-eb-c1-45-11:/etc/owampd#
>>>   bwping -T owamp -N 50 -i 0.1 -c hostA.hawaii.edu A AESKEY bob 
>>> /etc/bwctld/bwctld.keys -s hostB.hawaii.edu A AESKEY bob 
>>> /etc/bwctld/bwctld.keys
>>> bwping: 15 seconds until test results available
>>> 
>>> SENDER START
>>> bwctl: start_endpoint: 3610982423.024834
>>> bwctl: run_endpoint: receiver: hostA.hawaii.edu
>>> bwctl: run_endpoint: sender: hostB.hawaii.edu
>>> bwctl: exec_line: owping -t -c 50 -i 0.100000 [hostA.hawaii.edu]:4000
>>> bwctl: run_tool: tester: owamp
>>> bwctl: run_tool: receiver: hostA.hawaii.edu
>>> bwctl: run_tool: sender: hostB.hawaii.edu
>>> bwctl: start_tool: 3610982429.660192
>>> Approximately 8.1 seconds until results available
>>> 
>>> --- owping statistics from [hostB.hawaii.edu]:51330 to 
>>> [hostA.hawaii.edu]:54300 ---
>>> SID:    80abd6f4d73b381dc3ef584157befacb
>>> first:  2014-06-05T08:40:30.808
>>> last:   2014-06-05T08:40:34.978
>>> 50 sent, 0 lost (0.000%), 0 duplicates
>>> one-way delay min/median/max = 0.721/0.9/1.02 ms, (err=0.414 ms)
>>> one-way jitter = 0.1 ms (P95-P50)
>>> Hops = 6 (consistently)
>>> no reordering
>>> 
>>> bwctl: stop_tool: 3610982437.321193
>>> bwctl: stop_endpoint: 3610982439.333351
>>> 
>>> SENDER END
>> 
> 

--
David A. J. Ripley
Indiana University GlobalNOC.
<>
 +1-812-855-5079
http://mypage.iu.edu/~daripley/daripley.pgp