The 'impairment cleared' asserts used avg < 50 on three-packet IOS pings;
the unimpaired baseline is 20-45 ms with 4 ms quantization, and host
scheduling jitter pushed averages to 54/56 in two full-suite runs
(esw, dynamips) — a margin, not an impairment (the qdisc asserts pass,
success is 100 %). The contrasted delayed regime is >= 150 ms, so a
100 ms bound still separates the two cleanly. Docker's sub-millisecond
veth asserts keep their 50 ms bound (three orders of magnitude of
headroom, never observed to flake).
Same guard the ethernet-switch scenario already carries: NetworkManager
can release an NM-managed TAP from its bridge shortly after
(re-)enslavement (docs/bugs/networkmanager-tap-release.md). Applied to
the Dynamips, QEMU, IOU, IOL-runner and switch-cascade scenarios after
their nodes have booted (no-op where nmcli/NetworkManager is absent).
This keeps those tests deterministic on un-declared hosts.
The L2-anchor spec's behavioral guarantee — an idle link stays silent for
5 s once the enslavement burst settles — only ran in the Dynamips and
Docker suites. It now also runs in QEMU, IOU, the IOL container, the
switch fast path and the switch cascade, which covers every host-device
creation path:
* tap create (Dynamips/QEMU/IOU anchors), docker create_veth (Docker host
ends; the cascade's race-loser end is hardened after create by the
server), bridge add_nio_tap (the IOL container anchor, the fifth
creator), and the brctl switch bridges, whose multicast snooping is off
precisely so the bridge role can reach silence;
* each scenario silences its guests first (IOS interfaces shut through
the console; Docker guests' links down) and re-verifies the ping after;
* the cascade measures 8 devices at once (four absorbed router anchors,
both cascade ends, both switch bridges).
IOL 158 s, cascade 293 s, ESW fast path 378 s, QEMU 428 s, IOU 308 s —
all green.