High Volume Mobile Data Traffic Generation over LTE, UMTS, & GPRS Networks
Welcome to another October 2015 issue of GL's Newsletter providing information and insight into our latest High Density GTP Traffic Simulator referred to as 'PacketLoad' that is used for simulation of high volume of mobile data traffic (also referred to as user plane traffic) over LTE, UMTS, and GPRS Networks.
Overview
As traffic intensity increases, network elements within wireless network (including switches, routers, gateways and transmission) can impart various impairments such as errors, excessive delay, congestion, blocking, loss, and degrade quality. Their ability to handle huge traffic requires proper test and verification methods. Simulating high volume of mobile data traffic is extremely valuable to analyze the network elements characteristics as a function of traffic intensity and traffic type (e.g. Voice, Fax, Data, Video). For such a test requirement, we can now use GL's PacketLoad network appliance that works with MAPS™ Signaling and Traffic Simulator software to generate high volume of mobile GTP and packet traffic for up to 4 Gbps over any Wireless network (LTE, UMTS, and GPRS).
Functional capability
GL's PacketLoad is a high density packet traffic generation module that generates stateful TCP/HTTP, UDP, and PCAP Replay traffic and provides a "real-world" traffic conditions in the lab.
PacketLoad is a 1U network appliance that includes 4 x 1GigE Ethernet ports supporting total capacity of up to 4 Gbits/sec stateful packet traffic generations.
PacketLoad supports user plane packet transmission and reception services between any two nodes (GTP-U protocol entity) in UMTS (SGSN, GGSN, RNC), and LTE (SGW, PDNGW) networks. The appliance work with MAPS™ LTE S1, MAPS™ LTE eGTP-c, MAPS™ UMTS Gn Gp, MAPS™ IuPS applications.
The below diagram depicts a typical setup with GL's MAPS™ platform generating user plane traffic with PacketLoad to perform high performance testing on DUT.
Typical Setup for High Performance Testing on DUTs
High Performance Testing on 3G Network Elements – SGSN, GGSN
High Performance Testing on 4G Network Elements – SGW, PGW
Signaling and Mobile GTP and Packet Traffic Simulation in MAPS™
The packet traffic can be generated with GL's MAPS™ UMTS / LTE simulators along with PacketLoad module that allows to encapsulate the generated packet data within GTP headers and transmit through the gateway points such as SGSN & GGSN, or SGW & PGW. It allows simultaneous simulation of multiple sessions per user.
When User Equipment (UE) attaches to the network for the first time, it will be assigned default bearer which remains as long as UE is attached. Default bearer is best effort service. In addition to default bearer, dedicated bearers can be established for applications, which require guaranteed QOS (i.e Voice & Video). On successful dedicated bearer establishment all network elements in access & packet core must ensure negotiated QOS is met. PacketLoad can be used in testing the network elements by generating & validating the traffic below or above the negotiated QOS.
Currently, PacketLoad supports HTTP traffic simulationwith the base requirements such as port number, server IP address, and pre-canned HTTP traffic file.
Statistics
MAPS™ provides useful statistics to verify the simulated mobile data traffic like total packets transmitted and received, latency, delay, bandwidth, no of tcp connection created, successful connections, packet loss and so on.
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