Need help building a server to test 100Gb/s, 400Gb/s and a strech goal of 1000Gb/s

Hi there,

I've run out of things to google for and I'm looking for help/guidance. I need help building a server.

**Background**

I've been asked to help out with a university project (and I think it's because I know what IT stands for)

Effectively the bat s**t insane idea is to test a 1000Gb/s (1Tb/s) network. Fastest I've ever gotten is 10 Gb/s with a home lab.

Now they've agreed to start 'small' with 100Gb/s and push up to 400Gb/s either by 'NIC team' as soon as or buy the in currently in development 400Gb/s fibre when it releases in 3-4 years’ time.

(Hopefully I can get out of this place before they think of something else that's balls to the wall extreme).

Effectively, I've been asked to spec up the testing pc/server(s) to send test data and analyse the data throughput.

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** My thinking **

Software:

I'm assuming Wireshark is laughable if I tried to use that to capture traffic. And I honestly can't think of a way to generate that insane amount of traffic other than copying my whole steam library (I've calculated it at about 19s).

I'm also going open to the idea of using linux over windows (I'll just have to run a training class I guess for everyone).

Hardware:

I'm hoping they won't want to store the data, just test the speed. Either a RAID or a RAMdisk will be suitable.
So maybe 10x1TB ssd/s in RAID 0 and As much DDR4-4800 RAM that I can fit in a motherboard. Prioritising a high clock speed CPU over cores/threads that I can find. Oh and ofcourse 2 x dual 100Gb/s Mellanox network cards.

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** The question(s) **

Network speed is assumed at min 100Gb/s, pref 400Gb/s and total max of 1000Gb/s.

Software:

Packet/traffic generator, what would/could generate data for that network speed?
Packet capture, what software would beable to log/analyse that much data at that speed?
Operating system for this?

Hardware:

Let's pretend money grows on trees here...
What kinda hardware would I need to generate and capture this data through put?
Would a RAMdisk be better than a RAID 0 for serving data to a network?

Testing method:

I'm open to ideas on what the best way to test this network.

Any help or ideas or just things to google is a major help! Even if it's just a stop gap soultion, I.E. "This would be okay to about 400Gb/s for now".