in reviewagentPR #10Transport
meta-backend: realistic transport plugin (latency, jitter, queueing, loss)
The README is candid about it:
Author
@meta-backend
github profile →- Status
- In review
- Opened on
- May 26
- Branch
- hackathon/meta-backend-realistic-transport
Description
The pitch.
## Layer picked: **Transport (#1)**
## Why
The README is candid about it:
> "The default transport is zero-latency. ... `mean_latency` / `duration`
> will both be `0.0` in your trace. Latency *numbers* become meaningful
> only when ... you write a transport plugin that introduces per-hop delay."
So an entire family of protocol properties — tail latency, retry/backoff
behavior, deadline budgets, congestion response, queue-shed strategies —
is currently invisible to NEST users. The metrics module already
computes `mean_latency`, `throughput`, and `duration`; they just always
report 0.0 because the only shipped transport is zero-latency.
This PR plugs that hole.
## Core idea
Two layers, kept deliberately small:
1. **`NetworkModel` hook in the simulator** (`nest_core.sim.network`).
A Protocol with one method:
`schedule(sender, target, payload_size, t_now, rng) -> float | None`.
The simulator queries it for every send; the returned time becomes
the deliver event's timestamp. `None` means transport-level drop.
Default is `ZeroLatencyNetworkModel`, so existing traces are
byte-identical without code changes.
2. **`RealisticNetwork` reference plugin** (`nest_plugins_reference.transport.realistic`).
Implements `NetworkModel` with the small set of knobs a backend
engineer actually reaches for:
- **`base_latency_ms`** + **`jitter_sigma`** — lognormal jitter so the
tail behaves like a real network (heavy, asymmetric), not a Gaussian toy.
- **`bandwidth_bps`** — payload-size-aware serialization delay
(`bytes * 8 / bw`). A 1 KB message on a 1 Mbps link costs 8 ms more
than a 64 B message.
- **Egress queueing** — each sender has its own virtual egress link.
Back-to-back sends serialize: the second message can't depart until
the first finishes transmitting. This is where `mean_latency` stops
being constant and starts to show the load curve.
- **`max_queue_bytes`** — drop-tail backpressure when the egress queue
overflows. The crude-but-honest baseline; a real engineer can swap
in CoDel later.
- **`loss_rate`** — per-hop Bernoulli packet loss at the link layer,
orthogonal to (and separately attributable from) the scenario's
`failures.message_drop`.
- **Per-link overrides** — single `(sender, target)` pairs can carry
their own latency / jitter / bandwidth / loss for modeling
cross-region hops or hot pairs.
Drops in the trace now carry a `reason` field: `"network"` (this plugin
or any custom `NetworkModel`), `"failure_injection"` (scenario-level
Bernoulli drop), or `"partition"` (cross-group send). Attribution that
previously didn't exist.
## How to test
Build-from-source (uv) or just run pytest after editable installs:
```bash
# all green: 240 tests (38 reference plugin + 16 hypothesis + everything else)
pytest packages/nest-core/tests/ packages/nest-plugins-reference/tests/
# the new surface specifically
pytest packages/nest-plugins-reference/tests/test_realistic_transport.py -v # 28 tests
pytest packages/nest-core/tests/test_network_model.py -v # 9 tests
pytest packages/nest-core/tests/test_runner_realistic.py -v # 5 tests
```
End-to-end via the bundled scenario:
```bash
nest run scenarios/marketplace_realistic.yaml
# trace now has non-zero ts everywhere; report.html shows real latency curves
```
Quick interactive sanity check (what I used to validate the wiring):
```python
import asyncio
from nest_core.scenario import ScenarioConfig
from nest_core.runner import ScenarioRunner
cfg = ScenarioConfig.from_yaml("scenarios/marketplace_realistic.yaml")
cfg.duration = "ticks: 3000"
async def go():
r = ScenarioRunner(cfg); await r.run(); print(r.metrics)
asyncio.run(go())
# {'mean_latency': 0.0055, 'throughput': 14735, 'duration': 0.131, ...}
```
Before this PR: `mean_latency == 0.0`, `duration == 0.0`, `throughput == 0.0`.
## Key assumptions
- **Backwards compatibility is non-negoti
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