RFC 6815 · INFORMATIONAL · 2012

Applicability Statement for RFC 2544: Use on Production Networks Considered Harmful

Overview

RFC 6815, “Applicability Statement for RFC 2544: Use on Production Networks Considered Harmful”, is an Informational document published in November 2012 by S. Bradner, K. Dubray, J. McQuaid, A. Morton. It updates RFC 2544. The canonical text is published by the RFC Editor.

Abstract

The Benchmarking Methodology Working Group (BMWG) has been developing key performance metrics and laboratory test methods since 1990, and continues this work at present. The methods described in RFC 2544 are intended to generate traffic that overloads network device resources in order to assess their capacity. Overload of shared resources would likely be harmful to user traffic performance on a production network, and there are further negative consequences identified with production application of the methods. This memo clarifies the scope of RFC 2544 and other IETF BMWG benchmarking work for isolated test environments only, and it encourages new standards activity for measurement methods applicable outside that scope. This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is published for informational purposes.

Abstract as published in the RFC, via rfc-editor.org.

What “Informational” means

Published for the general information of the community. It does not define an IETF standard and carries no standards-track status.

Read this RFC

The canonical text of RFC 6815 is hosted at rfc-editor.org. Available in TXT,HTML.

Relationships to other RFCs
This RFC updates
RFC 2544
Other RFCs from 2012

Who Is Online

In total there are 107 users online: 0 registered, 97 guests and 10 bots.

Most users ever online was 5,555 on 17 Jul 2026, 3:23 am.

Bots: AhrefsBot Applebot Baiduspider Bingbot Googlebot Majestic Other Bot Other Crawler PetalBot SemrushBot

Users active in the past 15 minutes. Total registered members: 372