Newsletter: GL Enhances OC-3/12 and STM-1/4 Analysis & Emulation Products

Welcome to another August 2011 issue of GL's Newsletter providing information on our enhanced OC-3/STM-1 and OC-12/STM-4 Analysis and Emulation Card. The product supports full duplex capture, real-time protocol analysis and emulation of ATM, PoS, RAW, and Ethernet traffic over optical lines. Also it provides Linux and Windows SDKs for OEM integration. Now, the software has been enhanced with the capability of Synchronous Multi board wire speed capture and transmission of packets/cells to/from files.

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Overview

The LightSpeed1000™ is our enhanced Dual OC-3/STM-1 and OC-12/STM-4 PCI-Express card for protocol analysis and emulation of ATM, PoS, RAW, and Ethernet traffic. The card also supports 2 GigaBytes of DDR2 RAM, a GigE, and a USB 2.0 interface making this card one of the most versatile and powerful cards in GL's repertoire. LightSpeed1000™ comes with software for overall monitoring, BERT, emulation, and protocol analysis with a price tag that compares very favorably with similar test instruments at 3 times the price.

Multiple cards are possible in a desktop or rack PC for analysis of 4 or more signals simultaneously. When LightSpeed1000™ is enclosed (as shown below and coming soon), the USB 2.0 interface is used to connect with a Notebook PC. The GigE port provides independent Ethernet testing at wire speed for applications such as BERT and RFC 2544.

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A unique feature of the card is the capability to capture and transmit at wire speed to/from hard disk on all interfaces. This is now possible with two cards simultaneously and synchronously.


Other important and unique features:

  • Ability to capture to disk at full rate in both directions without errors on two cards (four ports). This permits detailed offline analysis that is not possible with other test instruments. Capture is possible on Multiple Boards synchronously on all optical ports and the single Ethernet port. Triggered and filtered capture is also available.
  • Wire speed BERT over ATM, PoS, and RAW formats on both ports simultaneously
  • Complex and flexible filtering options: Sixteen 128 bit independently applied filters, both ports, 128 bit user defined mask per filter, AND/OR Boolean expressions, include and exclude conditions
  • Hardware based precise time stamping of cells / packets with 10 nsec resolution
  • Portability thru a USB 2.0 Interface
  • Single Mode or Multi Mode Fiber SFP support
  • High performance x4 PCIe compliant interface
  • Onboard SODIMM memory (DDR2) - up to 2 Giga bytes

Modes of Operation:

PoS Mode - Packet over SONET / SDH

PoS, or Packet over SONET/SDH at OC-3/STM-1 and OC-12/STM-4 is supported at full rates over dual interfaces. Access, capture, analysis, and emulation of PPP and HDLC, all carrying IP traffic in real-time makes this card useful to many applications including Routing, Deep Packet Inspection, and other Internet traffic applications.

Current PoS applications include:

  • PoS Protocol Analysis with PPP / HDLC at wire speed
  • PoS Tx / Rx Test - an emulation and test capability that transmits test packets and checks packet data on receive
  • PoS BERT - support for the following PRBS Patterns: 29-1, 211-1, 215-1, 220-1, 223-1, 229-1, 231-1, All one's, All Zero's, Alternate ones and zeros, user defined pattern of lengths from 2 to 32 bits, invert and non-invert selections, single bit error insertion, error insert rate from 10-1 to 10-9, status for pattern sync, bit errors counters, and packet rate and packet gap configuration options, configurable header lengths and header information
  • The synchronous capture to files and synchronous transmit from files on multiple ports on multiple boards is achieved using software. It allows capturing packets/cells in the field from multiple STM1/SMT4 interfaces and playback it in synchronous manner to recreate the same scenario in the lab. Synchronization on a single board with two ports is done by hardware.
  • Alarms and Error Logging

ATM - Asynchronous Transfer Mode

ATM at OC-3/STM-1 and OC-12/STM-4 is supported at full rates over dual interfaces. Access, capture, analysis, and emulation of ATM cells at wire-speed make this interface capability applicable for wide ranging next generation networks.

Current ATM applications include:

  • ATM Protocol Analysisfor AAL2 and AAL5
  • ATM Tx/Rx Test - an emulation and test capability that transmits test cells and checks cell data on receive
  • ATM BERT - support for the following PRBS Patterns: 29-1, 211-1, 215-1, 220-1, 223-1, 229-1, 231-1, All one's, All Zero's, Alternate ones and zeros, user defined pattern of lengths from 2 to 32 bits, invert and non-invert selections, single bit error insertion, error insert rate from 10-1 to 10-9, status for pattern sync, bit errors counters, and cell rate and cell gap configuration options
  • Other ATM BERT options - HEC error insertion, on receive filtering is provided for idle cells, GFC, VPI, VCI, CL, and PT cells, cell counters for total cells, valid cells, idle cells, filtered cells, and filtered out cells
  • The synchronous capture to files and synchronous transmit from files on multiple ports on multiple boards allows to synchronize streams using software. It allows capturing cells in the field from multiple STM1/SMT4 interfaces and replaying them in synchronous manner to recreate the same scenario in a lab. Synchronization within a single board on two ports is done by hardware.
  • Alarms and Error Logging

RAW or Transparent Mode

Raw or transparent mode allows direct access to the SONET / SDH payload for BERT, data transmit and receive applications.

Current applications include:

  • RAW BERT - support for the following PRBS Patterns: 29- 1, 211- 1, 215- 1, 220- 1, 223- 1, 229- 1, 231- 1, All one's, All Zero's, Alternate ones and zeros, user defined pattern of lengths from 2 to 32 bits, invert and non-invert selections, single bit error insertion, error insert rate from 10-1 to 10-9, status for pattern sync, and bit errors counters
  • Alarms and Error Logging

For comprehensive information on the application, please refer to the LightSpeed1000™ - OC-3 / STM-1 and OC-12 / STM-4 Analysis and Emulation Card web page.


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