web-traffic-generator

A basic Python script generates traffic (GET) against a given web site.

---

A basic Python script that takes command line entry to run against a web site. Taking all available links on the target site and randomly doing gets against each. This is to generate traffic against the target only. Results of connecting are logged as STDOUT only and not to file. Setting log levels is supported to limit output if required, default is INFO.

Usage

This example script is to be used a test site to generate web traffic against a specific web site to provide data in other tools for example creating flow traffic in Nexus Dashboard Insights.

Two methods are available to use the script:

1. Locally from a laptop with python 3.10 installed and using virtual environments.
2. Using the provided Dockerfile to create a local image and run as a container.

Installation

To begin clone the repository to you local working directory.

git clone https://github.com/CiscoSE/web-traffic-generator.git

Once cloned change to the new project directory cd web-traffic-generator choose one of the following to run.

• Run locally
• Run using Docker

Run Locally with Python Virtual Envirnonment

If running locally start by creating and activating a python virtual environment.

python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate

Next use pip to install the required python libraries.

pip install -f requirements.txt

Finally, run the python scipt using cli arguments to set the target URL and optional flags.

python3 main.py <URL>

Available Command Line Option Flags

Option Flag	Default	Description
--sleep	5	Set the time between request against found links
--log, -l	INFO	Sets the logging level for output

Example

The following are examples of executing the different options against a target URL.

• Running script against https://cisco.com with default flags

python3 main.py https://cisco.com

• Running script with DEBUG logging against https://cisco.com

python3 main.py -l DEBUG https://cisco.com

• Running script against https://cisco.com with 10 seconds between requests (sleep timer)

python3 main.py --sleep 10 https://cisco.com

• Running script against https://cisco.com with 10 seconds between requests (sleep timer) with logging set to DEBUG

python3 main.py --sleep 10 -l DEBUG https://cisco.com

Run using Docker

A Dockerfile is included to quickly build a docker contaitner and start generating GET request against a target URLs contained links. It is assumed that Docker is already installed please refer to offical Docker installation documentation for help on setting up Docker locally.

1. To start clone the repository locally.
2. Build a docker image using the Dockerfile

docker build -t <image name> .

3. Create and run Docker container updating environment variables as required to set target URL. By default target URL is set to https://google.ca.

docker run -it --rm -e URL="https://cisco.com" web-traffic-generator

Available Environment Variable

Environment Variable	Default
URL	https://google.ca
SLEEP	5
LOG	INFO

Example Docker Run Commands

• Running script with DEBUG logging against https://cisco.com

docker run -it --rm -e URL="https://cisco.com" -e LOG="DEBUG" web-traffic-generator

• Running script against https://cisco.com with 10 seconds between requests (sleep timer)

docker run -it --rm -e URL="https://cisco.com" -e SLEEP="10" web-traffic-generator

• Running script against https://cisco.com with 10 seconds between requests (sleep timer) with logging set to DEBUG

docker run -it --rm -e URL="https://cisco.com" -e SLEEP="10" -e LOG="DEBUG" web-traffic-generator