Informatica MTools

Informatica MTools

Posted by: Informatica Ultra Messaging

Test network capability to diagnose and test multicast problems when using Informatica Ultra Messaging. Download the file for free!

Overview

Many organizations are looking to switch their high-speed messaging from TCP to Multicast. This can drastically improve their performance in streaming data applications, such as live market data, where you have many subscriber programs. However, many corporate network infrastructures provide limited multicast connectivity or are not able to sustain high message rates. Even sites that are successfully using multicast with legacy messaging systems encounter problems after an upgrade to a higher-performing messaging layer.Fortunately, most modern networking hardware is capable of passing wire-speed multicast with appropriate configuration parameters. The key is discovering configuration problems early and diagnosing them. The "msend", "mdump", and "mpong" tools can help. You can use them to evaluate your network's capacity to carry multicast traffic. Warning : If used carelessly, the msend tool can produce significant network loading and congestion, to the point of rendering switches and routers virtually non-functional. When using large burst counts (-b>500) and/or small pause times (-p<100), make sure to keep the number of bursts (-n) small enough to limit the duration of the test to a few seconds. Note:
  • Detailed documentation is packaged with the download file.

Features

Offers multiple options which are useful in diagnosing a variety of multicast problems. Contains 3 different tools MsendMdumpMpong

  • AIX-5-powerpc64 (IBM AIX version 5.2 on PowerPC hardware).
  • Linux-2.4-glibc-2.3-i686 (Linux kernel 2.4 on x86 hardware; should be usable on more recent Linux kernels, and on 64-bit x86 hardware).
  • SunOS-5.10-i386 (Solaris 10 on x86 hardware; should be usable on more recent Solaris versions, and on 64-bit x86 hardware).
  • Darwin-9.4.0-i386 (Mac OSX on x86 hardware).
  • FreeBSD-6-i386 (FreeBSD version 6 on x86 hardware).
  • SunOS-5.10-sparc (Solaris 10 on 32-bit SPARC hardware; should be usable on more recent Solaris versions, and on 64-bit Sparc hardware).
  • Win2k-i386 (Windows XP on 32-bit X86 hardware; should be usable on more recent Windows versions, and on 64-bit Windows).

Support

Comments (9) Comment can only be posted by Signed/Logged in user

Sort: Newest | Oldest
  • this tool is unable to download

  • There's a small bug in the latest version of mtools (as of 2018/01). If one uses the -qq option, we get a CODE BUG message. This is because on line 390, a Python developer got ahold of the code and forgot his braces . The code should read:if (o_quiet < 2) { sprintf(equiv_cmd, "msend -b%d%s-m%d -n%d -p%d%s-s%d -S%d%s%s %s", o_burst_count, (o_decimal)?" -d ":" ", o_msg_len, o_num_bursts, o_pause, o_quiet_equiv_opt, o_stat_pause, o_Sndbuf_size, (o_tcp) ? " -t " : ((o_unicast_udp) ? " -u " : " "), argv[toptind],argv[toptind+1]); printf("Equiv cmd line: %s\n", equiv_cmd); fflush(stdout);}
     |   1
     Load replies
  • Can the Mtool be running on Windows? I am not good with Unix and I am having a problem with Multicast within my network. We are running Juniper EX4300 switches through out the infrastructure. The network is fairly small. We have One Core switch and 4 lay 2 closets. We seen to run into the problem where the Edge switch port stop passing multicast traffics and it go into not receiving or transmitting multicast. But, when we reboot the switch. It seen to fixed the problem. I want know if this tool would be good for finding what the problem are. I have talked to multiple Juniper technical engineer. And they are not able to resolve the problem. Not the configuration issue they said. But we don't know what caused the problem. Maybe the switch just cant handle big multicast network. Please help. thanks Max M
     |   1
     Load replies
  • great legacy from the 29west acquisition, and it comes with binaries pre-compiled for a number of platforms! Great little app!
  • Can Informatica ultra messaging replace Oracle golden gate for real time data transfer ?if yes ! how do we implement it.
  • Hi, has this tool been tested with RHEL 6.3 OS? We observed some strange >70% packet loss with mdump while the network and server looks to be fine. We tried with another vendor's similar tool which does not show such big percentage of loss with the same sending rate/size.
     |   2
     Load replies
  • When I select download the zip file I get is "invalid or corrupt" it is 352 KB and has no files in it.
  • Hi, I can't seem to find the documentation that used to be in the http://www.29west.com/mtools site. Can you please reinstate that?
     |   2
     Load replies
  • this is a great handy tool to test/benchmark your network before you go any further steps. besides the basic connectivity test, you can also simulate all kinds of micro burst (size and volume) which is extremely useful if you do market data. I have identified several problems on my network and resolve it before it goes to production. it even give you flexibility to adjust receive socket buffer on the fly, which is very handy to troubleshoot kernel UDP packet drop. the drawback is that mpong is not very useful for latency test, it use igmp which cannot go off 1 hop (ttl=1) so you can only use it to test within true LAN but not if your network topology is more complicated. seems author doesn't want to share src which make some people reluctant to seriously use it.
     |   2
     Load replies