Newsletter: GL Annnounces 10 GigE Network Testing Solutions

Welcome to another January 2016 issue of GL's Newsletter providing information and insight into our latest 10 Gbps Network Testing Solutions.

10 GigE Network Testing Solutions

Overview

10 Gbps Ethernet offers data speeds up to 10 billion bits per second, generally over single mode or multimode fiber optic lines.  It is also referred to as 10 GE, 10 GigE, or 10 GbE.  10 Gbps is compatible with existing Ethernet protocols and can be easily integrated into existing networks.

GL's PacketExpert™ 10G with two 10 Gbps Optical Ports and two 10/100/1000 Mbps Electrical/Optical Ports provides comprehensive testing of 10 Gbps/1 Gbps Ethernet/IP networks.

IPNetSim™ 1U Rack Image

IPNetSim™ 1U Rack Image

With the capability to generate/receive traffic with stacked VLAN (Q-in-Q) and stacked MPLS, PacketExpert™ 10G finds use in testing a wide range of networks - from testing individual links/switches, testing local Ethernet/IP networks (LAN), end to end testing of Wide Area Networks (WAN), testing Core/MPLS networks, and much more.

Varieties of testing on 10 Gbps networks can be performed with a single tool - PacketExpert™ 10G. The following are the PacketExpert™ 10G Testing Scenarios:


10 Gbps Network Performance Testing

Performance testing capability includes Wirespeed BERT, RFC 2544 Testing, Y.1564 Testing, and Smart Loopback.

Bit Error Rate Testing (BERT)

GL's PacketExpert™ 10G's Wire speed BERT capability measures Bit Error Rate on Layer1, Framed Ethernet (Layer2), MPLS (Layer2.5), IP and UDP layers.  It supports generating various PRBS patterns such as 29-1, 211-1, 215-1, 220-1, 223-1, 229-1, and 231-1 including constant patterns such as All Ones, All Zeroes, Alternate Ones-Zeroes and user-defined test patterns ranging from 1 bit to 32 bits. Selection of optional sequence number insertion allows detecting out-of-sequence packets and packet loss.

Both BERT and Loopback support Stacked VLAN and Stacked MPLS.  BERT can be configured to send/receive streams with Stacked VLAN/Stacked MPLS frames.  In addition, the PacketExpert™ 10G allows sending traffic of specific frame length and rate.

RFC 2544 Testing

PacketExpert™ 10G supports all RFC 2544 Tests for the performance benchmarking of individual network elements. These include Throughput, Latency, Frame Loss, and Back-to-Back tests. Similar to BERT, RFC 2544 can be done over Framed Ethernet (Layer2), Stacked VLAN (Q-in-Q), Stacked MPLS, IP and UDP.

ExpertSAM™ (Y.1564 Testing)

GL's ExpertSAM™ is intended for multiservice testing to measure the maximum performance of the device or the network under test.  ExpertSAM™ is a set of procedures that test the ability of Ethernet-based services to carry a variety of traffic (voice, data, and video) at defined performance levels. In particular, it is aimed at addressing limitations of legacy RFC 2544 test procedures, especially for Service Level Agreements (SLA). It is the standard for turning up and troubleshooting mobile backhaul and business Ethernet services. Carrier Ethernet testing can be achieved by using GL's ExpertSAM™ application that supports Y.1564 based testing.

ExpertSAM™ supports testing upto 16 simultaneous streams. Each stream is capable of generating traffic on Framed Ethernet (Layer2), MPLS (Layer2.5), IP and UDP layers. All the Service Acceptance Parameters like Information Rate (IR), Frame Loss Ratio (FLR), Frame Transfer Delay (FTD) and Frame Delay Variation (FDV) are measured at full wirespeed and reported.

Smart Loopback 

PacketExpert™10G supports Smart Loopback and automatically swaps the MAC,IP and UDP address/port and loops back incoming frames at full wirespeed of 10 Gbps. Loopback is useful in many testing situations, where there is a need for a remote device looping back the test traffic.


Packet Capture and Replay

Wirespeed Record and Playback

PacketExpert™ 10G supports capture of packets at wirespeed and also storing of the captured packets in popular file formats (pcap, ngpcap) for later analysis. The two 10 Gbps ports can act as a high performance network tap, capturing packets at wirespeed from both directions, at the same time acting as a transparent link between two end nodes.

Hardware based capture allows highly precise timestamping (nanosecond accuracy). Also, hardware based wirespeed flexible filter allows to filter and capture only traffic of interest.

Wirespeed playback allows recreating real world conditions in the lab by allowing playback of captured files (pcap, ngpcap etc). Hardware based playback allows highly precise traffic timing reproduction, with nanosecond precision.

PacketBroker™

PacketBroker™ also acts as a network tap and captures wirespeed traffic in both directions. But, in this case, instead of recording the captured packets to a file, it sends the captured traffic on the output ports for real time analysis by packet analysis tools like Wireshark™, PacketScan™ etc. It also supports wirespeed filtering to capture only traffic of interest. And also allows certain packet modifications to insert useful information such as timestamp into the packet before sending out.

WAN Emulation (IPLinkSim™ and IPNetSim™)

GL's IPLinkSim™ and IPNetSim™ products support WAN emulation. These products are capable of emulating a WAN link, and introducing typical WAN impairments like Bandwidth Throttling, Latency, Jitter, Packet Loss, Packet Reordering, Packet Duplication, Packet Corruption, Congestion emulation etc. Both the products act as a transparent Ethernet bridge and can be connected between two LANs easily emulating a WAN link in the lab.

IPNetSim™ supports user defined streams to classify the traffic into upto 4 streams, and applying separate impairments for each stream independently, thus emulating multiple WAN links within a single device. It also supports bi-directional full wirespeed emulation i.e approximately 30 million packets/sec in each direction aggregating to a total 60 million packets/sec.

IPLinkSim™ supports single stream only, and applies the same impairments to all the traffic without segregating the traffic. In addition to the above impairments, IPLinkSim™ supports congestion emulation by allowing background traffic emulation.


Summary of Important Features

  • Comprehensive testing of Wirespeed Ethernet/IP networks up to 10 Gbps
  • Two Optical 10 Gbps ports (10G BASE-SR, -LR -ER full-duplex SFP)
  • Two Electrical/Optical 10/100/1000 Mbps ports (10/100/1000M Base-T Electrical OR 1G Base-X Optical SFP)
  • Touchscreen Handheld PacketExpert™ 10G available for field testing
  • Simultaneous traffic generation/reception at 100% 10 Gbps Wirespeed
  • Jumbo frames up to 16000 bytes supported
  • Simultaneous Wirespeed BERT on both 10G optical ports
  • Smart Loopback
  • RFC 2544 - Throughput, Latency, Frame Loss and Back to Back tests
  • Variable Rate and Variable Frame Size traffic generation for BERT
  • Ability to define Ethernet, IP and UDP header fields
  • IP and UDP header checksum validation
  • Easy to use and intuitive GUI provides easy way of configuring tests and viewing results
  • Optional functionalities (WAN Link Emulation, Y.1564 Testing, Record-Playback, PacketBroker™) can be easily added to the basic application to meet all the testing requirements on a high-speed Ethernet network

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