Why?

Test and configure Toxiproxy to simulate bad network connections. One of the testcases was to inject the toxic periodicly and with breaks between them.

Overview

This work exploits toxiproxy python module, docker and docker compose and can be udes to test out any application. All of the proxies and toxic configurations are stored in the config.json file.

General Steps

1. Clone/download this Toxiproxy repo locally.
2. Configure the ports in the docker-compose file
3. Adapt config.json
4. Docker-compose up. Run

docker-compose up

Output example

Explaining the components

Docker Compose

First, we will use docker compose. The toxiproxy service starts the toxicproxy server inside a container at port number 8474.

toxiproxy ports

• Optional: Exposing port number 8474 in both host and container makes it possible to connect to the toxiproxy server in the container and check its status from the host machine. A standard command is .\toxiproxy-cli.exe list to get the list of the proxies.
• Mandatory for RTSP connections: To read the RTSP data, expose the rtsp default port in the host machine 554 to a port inside the running toxiproxy container (I've chose here 554 aswell) and set it to upstream port in the config file.
• Mandatory if you want to get the stream outside of the container: linking the toxiproxy listen port (here 8554) to the host machine (8555 aswell) and the RTSP data can be streamed in a webbrowser or VLS using http//:localhost:8554

toxiproxyconfigurator

This section start out python script with the settings inside the config.json file.

• volumes: copies the config file inside the container.
• depends_on: waits for the toxiproxy container to start first. Check here.

version: '3'
services: 
  toxiproxy: 
    image: ghcr.io/shopify/toxiproxy:2.4.0
    ports: 
      - "8474:8474" 
      - "8554:8554" 
      - "554:554" 
  toxiproxyconfigurator: 
    image: mohamedkrs/toxiproxy
    volumes: 
      - ./config:/usr/app/src/config/ 
    depends_on: 
      - toxiproxy

config.json

Inside the config folder, the configuration is stored in a json file.

• Configuration section: it is possible to set one or multiple proxies. As an upstream we will take an RTSP camera located in 10.0.1.*** and the listen ip should always be 0.0.0.0.
• waitBeforeInjectingToxics: The injection will start after 5s in this example.
• Toxics: Multiple sets of toxins can be set, each set can inject multiple toxics
  • First set: it will be repeated 4 times, each time the toxics will be injected for a total duration = duration +/- duration_offset and then disabled for a total break = pause +/- pause_offset (durations and pauses can be set as milliseconds ms, seconds s or minutes m).
  • First set Toxics: In this example the slicer Toxic (see all types and attributes here) is injected in proxy:0 meaning RTSP proxy and proxy:1 meaning RTSP2.
  • Second set: In this example the latency Toxic is injected into RTSP.

Important:

• Setting repetition to -1 will inject the toxic permanently, keeping the repetition and injection intervals. → should be set at the end of the config file (infinite loop until CTR+C is clicked).
• Setting repetition to 0 will inject the toxic permanently and ignores the other time intervals (permanently active). → should be set at the beginning of the config file.

{
  "title": "Welcome to ToxiProxy",
  "configuration": [
    {
      "upstream": "10.0.1.***:554",
      "listen": "0.0.0.0:8554",
      "name": "RTSP",
      "enabled": true
    },
    {
      "upstream": "10.0.1.***:554",
      "listen": "0.0.0.0:8554",
      "name": "RTSP2",
      "enabled": true
    }
  ],
  "waitBeforeInjectingToxics":"5s",
  "Toxics": [
    {
      "repetition": 4,
      "duration": "15s",
      "duration_offset":"0s",
      "break": "5s",
      "break_offset":"0s",
      "toxicAttrib": [
        {
          "proxy": 0,
          "type": "slicer",
          "name": "slicer",
          "attributes": {
            "average_size":100,
            "delay": 1000000
          },
          {
          "proxy": 1,
          "type": "slicer",
          "name": "slicer",
          "attributes": {
            "average_size":100,
            "delay": 1000000
          }
        },
        
      ]
    },
    {
      "repetition":5 ,
      "duration": "15s",
      "duration_offset":"0s",
      "break": "5s",
      "break_offset":"0s",
      "toxics": [
        {
          "proxy": 0,
          "type": "latency",
          "name": "latency",
          "attributes": {
            "latency":1000
          }
        },
        
      ]
    }
  ]
}

TBD

• Tests