Synthetic Network Testing Microservice

A Spring Boot–based microservice that lets you define, schedule, and execute synthetic HTTP and ICMP tests, stream results to Kafka, persist them in PostgreSQL, and run containerized via Docker/Kubernetes. Ideal for showcasing Java, Kafka, Docker, and cloud-native skills.

---

Table of Contents

1. Overview
2. Features
3. Architecture
4. Getting Started
   • Prerequisites
   • Clone & Build
   • Configuration
   • Run Locally
5. Usage
6. Running with Docker Compose
7. Testing
8. Future Enhancements
9. Contributing
10. License

---

Overview

This microservice allows you to:

• Create & manage synthetic test configurations (HTTP or ICMP).
• Schedule periodic execution of these tests.
• Stream each test result to Kafka for real-time processing.
• Persist historical results in PostgreSQL for analysis.
• Expose REST APIs for configuration and (optionally) result retrieval.
• Containerize the entire stack with Docker and Kubernetes manifests.

---

Features

• REST API for CRUD operations on test configurations
• Spring Scheduling to trigger tests at configurable intervals
• HTTP & ICMP measurement implementations
• Apache Kafka producer & consumer integration
• Spring Data JPA + PostgreSQL for storage
• Spring Boot Actuator for health checks & metrics
• Dockerfile and docker-compose.yml for local orchestration
• Kubernetes manifests for cloud-native deployment

---

Architecture

flowchart TD
  subgraph Client
    A[User CLI / Dashboard]
  end

  subgraph Microservice
    B[REST API]
    C[TestExecutionService]
    D[Kafka Producer]
    E[Kafka Consumer]
    F[PostgreSQL]
  end

  subgraph Message Bus
    K[Apache Kafka]
  end

  A -->|Configure tests via HTTP| B
  B --> C
  C -->|HTTP/ICMP calls| Target[Network Targets]
  C -->|produce| D
  D --> K
  K --> E
  E --> F
  A -- optional: View results via REST --> B

Loading

---

Future Enhancements

Planned and potential improvements for this microservice include:

• Advanced Alerting & Notification
  Integrate with email, Slack, or PagerDuty for real-time alerts on test failures or threshold breaches.

• Configurable Test Types
  Support additional protocols (DNS, TCP, TLS, etc.) and custom test scripts.

• Historical Analytics Dashboard
  Build a web dashboard for visualizing trends, uptime, and performance metrics over time.

• Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)
  Add authentication and authorization for multi-user environments.

• Distributed Test Agents
  Deploy lightweight agents in multiple regions or clouds for global network visibility.

• Self-Healing Automation
  Integrate with orchestration tools to trigger automated remediation actions on failures.

• AI-Powered Anomaly Detection
  Use machine learning to detect unusual latency, packet loss, or outage patterns in test results, and proactively surface incidents.

• Predictive Analytics
  Leverage AI to forecast potential network degradations based on historical data and trends.

• Natural Language Interface
  Allow users to configure and query tests using natural language (e.g., via a chatbot or voice assistant).

• Integration with Observability Platforms
  Export metrics to Prometheus, Grafana, or OpenTelemetry for unified monitoring.

---

Feel free to contribute ideas or open issues for additional enhancements!