Seagull: an Open Source Multi-protocol traffic generator

Welcome to Seagull!

Seagull is a free, Open Source (GPL) multi-protocol traffic generator test tool. Primarily aimed at IMS (3GPP, TISPAN, CableLabs) protocols (and thus being the perfect complement to SIPp for IMS testing), Seagull is a powerful traffic generator for functional, load, endurance, stress and performance/benchmark tests for almost any kind of protocol.

In addition, its openness allows to add the support of a brand new protocol in less than 2 hours - with no programming knowledge. For that, Seagull comes with several protocol families embedded in the source code:

Binary/TLV (Diameter, Radius and many 3GPP and IETF protocols)
External library (TCAP, SCTP)
Text (XCAP, HTTP, H248 ASCII)

Protocols are then implemented on top of those protocol families using user editable XML dictionaries. Those dictionaries describe how messages and parameters are encoded, allowing a great flexibility.

A Seagull scenario - written in XML - describes the messages that are sent and received. It also indicate the behavior to adopt in case a message is unexpected or a check on a parameter fails.

Entirely coded in C++, Seagull is optimized for performances.

Ready to install packages are available for HP-UX (PARisc and IPF/IA64), Linux and Win32 (Cygwin). Seagull can also be compiled from the source code.

A short white paper on Seagull "Seagull - Open Source tool for IMS testing" is available.

Protocols currently supported

Seagull supports currently the following protocols:

Diameter base ( RFC 3588) and any Diameter relating application - IMS Cx, Dx, Ro, Rf, Sh over TCP or SCTP or TLS over IPv4 or IPv6.
TCAP ITU and ANSI and any protocol over TCAP (Camel, GSM MAP, IS41, Win, ...) either over SS7 (E1/T1) or SIGTRAN. For that, it relies on HP OpenCall SS7.
XCAP over HTTP over IPv4
HTTP over IPv4
H248/Megaco ASCII form over UDP or TCP or SCTP/IPv4
Radius (subset) over IPv4.

Features

Seagull has the following features:

Multi-protocol traffic generator
Command line tool with text interface
Protocols of the same family are described in an XML, user editable, dictionary (messages, parameters)
Existing protocol families: Binary/TLV (Type, Length, Value), Raw binary, Text, external API (first implementation: HP OpenCall SS7)
Support of IP (UDP/TCP), SCTP, SSL/TLS and SS7/TCAP transports
Portable programming (tested and supported on Linux x86, ia64, HPUX, SunOS and Windows)
Scenarios are described using XML files
Multi-threaded for performances and reliability
Dynamically adjustable scenario rate
Uniform, Poisson or Best-effort scenario arrival distribution
Remote-control (scenario-rate set, counter dump) through standard HTTP interface
Pause and restart of traffic
Support of automated traffic profile (varying scenario rate)
Smooth (no new scenarios then wait for ongoing scenarios to end) or brutal end
Scenario display with message counters
Scenarios have init (executed once), main (repeated for traffic) sections
Scenarios have default sections for defense in case of unexpected messages
A scenario can be mono (most cases) or multi-protocol
Message and parameters checking possible (disabled by default)
Support of parameter injection following a CSV like database
Multiple Seagull instances can be synchronized in the middle of scenario
Intra scenario synchronization using a synchronization protocol (example application provided in Java language)
Statistics: timer between two messages, scenario length, scenario rate, successful scenarios, failed scenarios (with reason)
Protocol decoding and hexadecimal dump
Trace files with or without timestamps (for performances and automation)
...

Better than a thousand words, see Seagull flying:

Open Source

Seagull is a free and Open Source program, released under the terms of the GNU GPL v2 license.

It is a contribution that HP OpenCall Software provides to the IMS - and protocol - community.

As such, there is no support provided for Seagull, but you can likely get email-based support from the Seagull users community.

Download

Don't wait any longer: download Seagull, install it and start to run tests now!