network-quality-assessment

🚀 Hardware timestamping vs software measurement

Problem

Software-based measurements are affected by OS scheduling, buffering and interrupt latency.

Solution

Use FPGA/SFP datapath timestamping with custom SLA probe packets.

Result

• microsecond-level jitter visibility
• accurate one-way delay
• reliable SLA validation

---

⚡ What you get

• true network delay (not host delay)
• real jitter (not OS noise)
• packet loss on datapath
• correlation-ready metrics
• hardware-free synthetic SLA demo for reproducible review

---

🚀 Quick navigation

• Runnable synthetic SLA demo
• SLA trace schema
• Synthetic SLA demo plan
• Reviewer acceptance checklist
• Architecture
• Packet flow
• Benchmark & analytics
• Sample result package
• Measurement credibility
• Engineering metrics
• SLA report template
• Experiment manifests
• Case study
• Network analysis
• Real-time system
• Root cause analysis
• Clock synchronization
• Hardcore engineering
• Quick start
• Demo

---

🧪 Runnable synthetic SLA demo

Run the full reporting pipeline without FPGA/SFP hardware:

python tools/generate_synthetic_sla_trace.py \
  --output verification/reports/synthetic_sla_demo/synthetic_trace.csv

python tools/analyze_sla_trace.py \
  --input verification/reports/synthetic_sla_demo/synthetic_trace.csv \
  --output-dir verification/reports/synthetic_sla_demo

Generated artifacts:

verification/reports/synthetic_sla_demo/
├─ synthetic_trace.csv
├─ sla_summary.csv
├─ report.md
├─ one_way_delay_timeseries.svg
├─ jitter_histogram.svg
└─ packet_loss_timeline.svg

The same flow is checked by GitHub Actions in synthetic-sla-demo.yml. The input/output CSV contract is described in SLA trace schema. Use the reviewer acceptance checklist to separate a reproducible synthetic demo from a promoted hardware SLA measurement.

---

🧭 Architecture

---

🔁 Packet flow

---

🌐 Topology

---

⚙️ FPGA timestamp pipeline

Hardware timestamp datapath

---

📦 Packet decode (Wireshark-style)

---

📊 Benchmark & analytics

SLA dashboard

The dashboard is populated with the baseline metrics from the committed sample result package under results/sample-test-1/.

---

Sample result package

The repository includes a small checked-in result set that reviewers can open without generating new data:

• Sample summary
• Sample plot package
• Filled report example

It is intentionally compact, but it gives the repository one concrete measurement artifact path instead of only templates.

---

🧪 Case study

👉 Metro Ethernet SLA validation

---

🌐 Network analysis

• 👉 Network effects
• 👉 Traffic analysis
• 👉 Anomaly detection

---

🧠 Root cause analysis

👉 Root cause analysis rules

---

⚡ Real-time system

👉 Real-time pipeline

---

📡 Monitoring integration

👉 Monitoring integration

---

⏱️ Clock synchronization

👉 PTP / clock sync

---

🧠 Hardcore engineering

• 👉 Timing error budget
• 👉 Latency model
• 👉 Measurement credibility
• 👉 Engineering metrics
• 👉 SLA report template
• 👉 Timestamp comparison manifest

---

🔬 Quick start

Generate demo dataset and graphs:

python tools/generate_demo_benchmark.py

Run the synthetic SLA demo:

python tools/generate_synthetic_sla_trace.py --output verification/reports/synthetic_sla_demo/synthetic_trace.csv
python tools/analyze_sla_trace.py --input verification/reports/synthetic_sla_demo/synthetic_trace.csv --output-dir verification/reports/synthetic_sla_demo

---

🎯 Demo

• 👉 Runnable synthetic SLA demo
• 👉 SLA trace schema
• 👉 Run demo scenario