ipfix-generator

ipfix-generator is a Spring Boot application for generating IPFIX traffic for demos, lab environments, and integration testing. It provides a browser-based UI for creating generator jobs and a small REST API for listing jobs and their history.

Features

• Web UI for creating and reviewing IPFIX generation jobs
• Supports both L2IP and IPv4 5-tuple generator templates
• REST endpoints for listing jobs and retrieving per-job history
• Hosted Swagger UI for interactive REST API documentation
• Configurable target host, port, packets-per-second, and packet counts
• Container image published to GitHub Container Registry
• Helm chart for Kubernetes-based deployments

Screenshots

Quickstart with Docker

1. Start the container:

docker run -d \
  --name ipfix-generator \
  -p 8080:8080 \
  ghcr.io/jfwenisch/ipfix-generator:latest

2. Open http://localhost:8080 in your browser.

3. Create a generator job from the home page by setting:

• destination host
• destination port
• packets per second
• total packets

4. Review active jobs under http://localhost:8080/jobs.

5. Inspect job history in the UI or through GET /api/jobs/{id}/history.

Helm Chart

Install from the chart repository

helm repo add jfwenisch https://charts.wenisch.tech
helm repo update
helm install ipfix-generator jfwenisch/ipfix-generator -n ipfix-generator --create-namespace

Install from this repository

helm install ipfix-generator ./chart -n ipfix-generator --create-namespace

Upgrade an existing release

helm upgrade ipfix-generator ./chart -n ipfix-generator

Chart-specific configuration examples are documented in chart/README.md.

Application Usage

Web UI

• GET / renders the landing page and job creation form
• GET /jobs renders the jobs overview page
• GET /jobs/{id} renders the job detail view

REST API

• GET /api/jobs returns all known generator jobs
• GET /api/jobs/{id} returns one generator job
• GET /api/jobs/{id}/history returns the history of one job
• POST /api/jobs creates a new generator job from a JSON request body
• template supports L2IP and IPV4_FIVE_TUPLE, defaulting to L2IP when omitted
• POST /api/jobs/{id}/stop stops a running or continuous generator job
• GET /v3/api-docs exposes the OpenAPI document
• GET /swagger-ui/index.html serves the interactive Swagger UI

The application keeps job state in memory, so a restart clears the current job list.

Example create request:

{
  "destHost": "127.0.0.1",
  "destPort": "4739",
  "pps": "1",
  "totalPackets": "10",
  "template": "IPV4_FIVE_TUPLE"
}

Build and Development

Prerequisites

• Java 21
• Maven 3.9+
• Docker
• Helm 3.x

Build and Test

mvn -B -f src/pom.xml test
mvn -B -f src/pom.xml package

Run from Source

mvn -B -f src/pom.xml spring-boot:run

Build the Container Locally

docker build -t ghcr.io/jfwenisch/ipfix-generator:local .
docker run --rm -p 8080:8080 ghcr.io/jfwenisch/ipfix-generator:local

License

This project is licensed under the GNU GPL v3. See LICENSE for details.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome. Fork the repository, make your changes in a feature branch, and open a pull request with a clear description of the change.

Acknowledgments

This project is influenced by jFlowLib, which provides a Java library to parse and generate sFlow and IPFIX data.