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1.1     ! misho       1: Subject:  iperf3 status, April 2017
        !             2: 
        !             3: This is the first of a series of (maybe periodic?) updates about
        !             4: iperf3 development:
        !             5: 
        !             6: State of the iperf3 World, as seen from ESnet...
        !             7: ------------------------------------------------
        !             8: 
        !             9: iperf3 was originally written to be a "better", more maintainable
        !            10: follow-on to iperf2.  This was seen to be necessary to fill the 
        !            11: requirements for the perfSONAR project (http://www.perfsonar.net).
        !            12: 
        !            13: In the past few years, iperf2 development has been restarted by Bob
        !            14: McMahon of Broadcom.  He (and other contributors) have fixed a number
        !            15: of problems with iperf2 and added some new features
        !            16: (https://sourceforge.net/projects/iperf2/).  We're happy to observe
        !            17: that iperf2 is once again under active development, and we have
        !            18: started discussing ways in which these two projects could productively
        !            19: interact.
        !            20: 
        !            21: We note that iperf3 lacks several features found in iperf2, for
        !            22: example multicast tests, bidirectional tests, multi-threading, and
        !            23: official Windows support.  Given the active state of iperf2
        !            24: development and maintenance, we feel that the needs of users requiring
        !            25: such functionality are best met by using a recent version of iperf2
        !            26: instead of waiting for them to be backported or reimplemented in
        !            27: iperf3.
        !            28: 
        !            29: ESnet's main interest in iperf3 is for testing high-performance
        !            30: Research and Education (R&E) networks, especially as a part of the
        !            31: perfSONAR toolkit.  iperf3 can be useful in other circumstances as
        !            32: well, but high-speed R&E network performance testing will remain the
        !            33: primary use case.  (Much of iperf2's recent development
        !            34: has focused on the use of UDP for end-to-end latency testing on a
        !            35: broad range of platforms, although it too is useful for many other
        !            36: testing scenarios.)
        !            37: 
        !            38: iperf3 Support
        !            39: --------------
        !            40: 
        !            41: We're trying to work down the support backlog for iperf3.  To that
        !            42: end, we've been aggressively triaging iperf3 issues in the issue
        !            43: tracker on GitHub.  Over the past several weeks, we've gone from about
        !            44: 180 open issues to less than 75.  A number of these issues were user
        !            45: questions, not bug reports or enhancement requests.  We're now
        !            46: discouraging the use of the iperf3 issue tracker for questions.
        !            47: Instead we'd like users to either use the mailing list
        !            48: (iperf-dev@google-groups.com) or to look to various question sites on
        !            49: the Internet such as Stack Overflow (http://www.stackoverflow.com).
        !            50: 
        !            51: We're happy to accept enhancement requests, although it should be
        !            52: noted that ESnet's time commitments to iperf3 are somewhat limited and
        !            53: we need to prioritize our work to match our own requirements.  We have
        !            54: begun using the "Help Wanted" label in the issue tracker on GitHub to
        !            55: indicate requests we agree with (or at least don't object to), but
        !            56: which we don't have the time to work on ourselves.  These are good
        !            57: candidates for someone in the community to work on and submit as a
        !            58: pull request.
        !            59: 
        !            60: Pull requests are still encouraged, as long as they're compatible with
        !            61: ESnet's goals and requirements for iperf3.  If you're contemplating a
        !            62: code change that would have a major, fundamental change on the iperf3
        !            63: architecture, we strongly encourage discussion with the iperf3
        !            64: maintainers before doing a significant amount of work.
        !            65: 
        !            66: Some of the above considerations are now documented in GitHub
        !            67: templates that we've recently installed for new issues, pull requests,
        !            68: and contribution guidelines.
        !            69: 
        !            70: To make it easier for new users with common questions, we have created
        !            71: a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) list, which is now available on the
        !            72: iperf3 Web site, at:
        !            73: 
        !            74: http://software.es.net/iperf/faq.html
        !            75: 
        !            76: Future Plans
        !            77: ------------
        !            78: 
        !            79: In the near-term, we're planning another iperf3 release that will
        !            80: include some recently added changes.  Because some of the changes are
        !            81: rather large, we're considering basing this release off the mainline
        !            82: which would make it the first 3.2 release, rather than try to backport
        !            83: these changes and make another "bugfix" 3.1 release.  No decisions
        !            84: have been made yet.
        !            85: 
        !            86: The main changes (already on the master branch) are authentication
        !            87: (#517), a more fine-grained pacing timer (#460), and some portability
        !            88: fixes.  We'd appreciate any testing and feedback that users in the
        !            89: community could give on these.
        !            90: 
        !            91: Thanks for your interest and support of iperf3,
        !            92: 
        !            93: Bruce Mah
        !            94: Software Engineering Group
        !            95: ESnet