Perhaps iperf (https://iperf.fr/) and omnet++ (https://omnetpp.org/) are candidates to what you seek. Students in their final year projects at university of Skövde use iperf to generate network traffic, mainly due to its simplicity. Omnet++ is a simulator, which can be connected to a real network. So, clients can reside in the real world and you can use simulated servers and vice versa. Can be more complex than your needs.

If you want all sorts of connections and protocols like used in a normal day to day home/office use, you might try this approach:

Hopefully, this simple solution can be extended and adapted to your needs.

Distributed Internet Traffic Generator - A tool for the generation of realistic network workload for emerging networking scenarios

D-ITG  is a platform capable to produce IPv4 and IPv6 traffic by accurately replicating the workload of current Internet applications.

At the same time D-ITG is also a network measurement tool able to measure the most common performance metrics (e.g. throughput, delay, jitter, packet loss) at packet level.

D-ITG can generate traffic following stochastic models for packet size (PS) and inter departure time (IDT) that mimic application-level protocol behavior. By specifying the distributions of IDT and PS random variables, it is possible to choose different renewal processes for packet generation: by using characterization and modeling results from literature, D-ITG is able to replicate statistical properties of traffic of different well-known applications (e.g Telnet, VoIP , Voice Activity Detection,  HTTP, FTP,  SMTP, DNS, network games).

http://traffic.comics.unina.it/software/ITG/download.php

Perhaps iperf (https://iperf.fr/) and omnet++ (https://omnetpp.org/) are candidates to what you seek. Students in their final year projects at university of Skövde use iperf to generate network traffic, mainly due to its simplicity. Omnet++ is a simulator, which can be connected to a real network. So, clients can reside in the real world and you can use simulated servers and vice versa. Can be more complex than your needs.

You may use Opnet here.

Hi there,

To generate HTTP traffic, try to install Apache httpd tool,

For SMTP, try  Postfix or Dovecol

For FTP, try Vsftpd.

All the tools are Linux based.

As for Telnet, you may use VPCS feature in GNS3 emulator by connecting it to the physical machine and then telnet it from those VPCs.

good luck

Hi 

For simple testing you may use cisco packet tracer and for realistic analysis use riverbed modeller.. the later one can give perfect results

Wireshark can be used for this purpose.

There are many tools available for this purpose. The selection is based on your knowledge and awareness about tool.  Some tools are as follows:

1.  Apache

2.  Postfix 

3. Vsftpd

4. Wireshark

Can I use a dataset to generate the normal traffic? such that KDD cup dataset.

How can I get packets per minute in D-ITG , as it generates packets per second

iPerf3 (https://iperf.fr/):

iPerf3 is a tool for active measurements of the maximum achievable bandwidth on IP networks. It supports tuning of various parameters related to timing, buffers, and protocols (TCP, UDP, SCTP with IPv4 and IPv6). For each test, it reports the bandwidth, loss, and other parameters. ...

I have used NetSim and found it very useful. It has an inbuilt traffic generator which can model http, ftp, voice, video, email .. etc.

Can we use ostinato to generate “random“ traffic in a network?