About

Why Ostinato

I believe in having the right tools for the job. For too long, traffic generators have been too expensive for everyday use, so network engineers often cobble together workarounds or end up doing without one.

I created Ostinato to change that. My goal is simple: to give every network engineer a capable, affordable traffic generator they can rely on.

Origin

Back in 2007, while working on a home router at a DSL vendor, I needed a traffic generator for development and testing. Ixia and Spirent were far beyond what I could reasonably request or justify, so getting one was out of the question - even though it would have made our team much more productive.

So I did what any programmer does – write my own. It should not be too difficult or time-consuming, I thought - naive me!

I came up with a minimum feature list and pitched the idea internally, but when nothing came of it, I started working on it during nights and weekends. By 2010, I felt it had enough functionality to be useful to others as well, so I christened it Ostinato and released it as an open-source project with a post to the Wireshark mailing list.

Evolution and Growth

Since that public launch, Ostinato has found its way into labs, field equipment, QA teams, classrooms, and research projects. The community pushed it in directions I had not imagined, and I continued improving it in response to real-world needs.

As usage expanded, so did expectations. To support sustainable development and deliver the capabilities that modern labs demand, Ostinato transitioned to a commercial model in 2024. This enabled a full-time development effort and paved the way for Ostinato 2.0: a major upgrade focused on performance, protocol emulation, usability, cross-platform support, cloud support, and a long-term release strategy.

Ostinato Today

Today, Ostinato is a modern traffic generator and network test platform used by engineers, vendors, security teams, educators, and researchers around the world. It provides an affordable way to generate L2/L3 traffic, emulate protocols, validate performance and protocol behavior, automate tests, and integrate with lab environments like GNS3, EVE-NG, CML, and Containerlab.

Ostinato continues to evolve, with ongoing development that adds new features and capabilities, and expands protocol support over time.

Awards and Recognitions

About Me

Ostinato creator - Srivats P

My name is Srivats P.

I’m a network engineer and developer with more than 25 years of experience across home routers, DSLAMs, L2 and L3 switches, edge and core routers and data plane engineering at several networking vendors. In 2022, I quit my day job to work on Ostinato full-time.

Outside of programming and playing with packets, I enjoy distance running, play the piano and guitar, and occasionally publish blog posts or cover songs.

You can follow me on my blog or find me on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Srivats P
Creator, Ostinato