GL Announces Multi-Stream IP WAN Emulator

Welcome to January, 2016 issue of GL's Newsletter providing information and insight into our latest product Multi-Stream IP WAN  Emulator referred to as IPNetSim™ (1 Gbps/10 Gbps).

Multi-Stream IP WAN Emulator Network

Overview

IPNetSim™ emulates an IP network with access to 10 Gbps full duplex link or a 10/100/1000 Mbps full duplex link. For each direction, incoming traffic can be identified into separate user defined streams (up to 16 streams for 1 Gbps pipe and up to 4 streams for 10 Gbps pipe). These user defined streams can be modified to simulate network impairments.

IPNetSim™ comprises of 4 ports, of which 2 ports support 10/100/1000 Mbps in either Electrical or Optical mode, emulating a 1Gbps full duplex pipe. The optical mode supports only 1000 Mbps using SFPs enabling testing on optical fiber. The other two ports on the unit support 10 Gbps using 10 Gbps SFP+s.


Specifications

1U Rack-mount Hardware Unit

1U Rack-mount Hardware Unit

Software   Hardware
Stream Definition Parameters
  • IP Source and Destination Address Range
  • UDP Source and Destination Port Range
  • MAC Addresses
  • VLAN ID
  • MPLS Label

WAN Emulation Parameters

  • Bandwidth control - 1 Kbps up to 10 Gbps
  • Latency/Delay
    • 0 milliseconds up to 1.5 seconds per stream (for 1Gbps link)
    • 0 milliseconds up to 0.5 seconds per stream (for 10 Gbps link)
    • single delay, uniform, random distributions
  • Packet Loss Rate - 0-100%
  • Packet Reordering Rate - 0-100% with Delay range of up to 2 seconds
  • Packet Duplication Rate - 0 - 100%
  • Logic Error insertion Rate - 10^-1 to 10^-9
  • Maximum Frame Size Supported - 2048 bytes
   Interfaces

2 x 1Gbps Base-X Optical OR 1000 Base-T Electrical 
2 x 10Gbps Base-SR, -LR -ER Optical only 
USB 2.0 

Connector

Single Mode or Multi-Mode Fiber SFP Support with LC Connector

Functional Capabilities

Simulating WAN Conditions

WAN Emulation includes various real world WAN settings such as Bandwidth, Latency, Packet-Loss, Error Insertion, Reordering, and Duplication to check the performance of end equipment to real world impairments. These settings can be applied for the selected 16 unique streams on 1Gbps link and 4 unique streams on 10Gbps link independently in each direction.

Traffic (bidirectional streams) can be processed at wirespeed (1Gbps or 10Gbps). Bidirectional streams can be configured as symmetrical (identical WAN impairments in both directions) or asymmetrical (different WAN impairments in each direction).  WAN impairments can be configured independently for each stream.

Simulating WAN Conditions
Multistream WAN Emulator ipnetsim 1G Link Configuration

By classifying traffic into separate streams, and applying different set of impairments on each stream, a single IPNetSim™ can emulate different WAN scenarios like Head Office to Data Center, Head Office to Branch Office etc.

User Defined Streams

User Defined Streams

As depicted in the screen, IPNetSim™ includes a powerful ”Stream Definition” feature that permits user to configure MAC, IP, VLAN, MPLS, UDP header fields to classify the traffic into multiple streams.

For each stream, user can define the stream parameters separately for each direction (P1 → P2 and P2 → P1). Streams can be defined in two modes - Packet Mode or Raw Mode. In Packet mode, streams can be defined based on fields like Source/Destination MAC Address, VLAN Id, MPLS Label, Source/Destination IPv4 Address, Source/Destination UDP ports etc. Each field can be compared against a fixed value, range of values or ANY value.

In Raw mode, user can select a 120 byte window anywhere within the frame (starting from MAC Destination Address field till the end of Payload) to compare and identify the stream using raw hex data (120 bytes) and an offset. User can also define a corresponding 120 byte Hex mask, so that each bit can be set to 'Compare' or 'Don't care' conditions.


Stream and Per Port Statistics

Stream and Per Port Statistics

As depicted in the screen, real-time traffic statistics per stream are displayed. The statistics include Tx and Rx Frames, Dropped Packets (due to Bandwidth Control), Number of Packets with Errors, Dropped Packets (due to Packet Loss), Duplicated Packets, and Reordered Packets.  In addition to Stream statistics, detailed per port frame statistics is also provided.


Stream Throughput Graph

Stream Throughput Graph

As depicted in the screen, the real-time Throughput of each stream, plotted as rate against time is displayed in the form of line graph. All streams throughput can be viewed together, or user can select or deselect each stream to view. Graphing is supported from 5 seconds up to 7 days.


Important Features

  • Ability to create up to 16 bi-directional streams on 1Gbps link or 4 bidirectional streams on 10Gbps link with independent WAN emulation parameters
  • Supports various WAN impairments like bandwidth throttling, congestion, latency, jitter, packet loss, packet duplication, dropped packets, packet corruption etc
  • Bandwidth Throttling feature to mimic slower WAN links like RS232/DSL/Modem/T1/E1/T3/E3 etc
  • Independent per stream WAN impairments helps emulate different WAN links in a single device
  • Detailed per stream statistics for easy performance monitoring
  • Live throughput graphs per stream to visualize the effects of WAN impairments on the traffic

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