GL Announces One Stop Solution for 10Gbps Ethernet/IP Test Needs

Welcome to another November 2015 issue of GL Communications' Newsletter providing information and insight into our comprehensive Next Generation Ethernet/IP Tester referred to as PacketExpert™ 10G that supports comprehensive testing of 10G and 1G Ethernet/IP networks. 

Overview

GL's PacketExpert™ 10G provides comprehensive testing of 10 Gbps/1 Gbps Ethernet/IP networks. It has two 10 Gbps Optical ports and two 10/100/1000 Mbps Electrical/Optical ports and capable of Bit Error Rate Testing (BERT), Smart Loopback, RFC 2544 Testing.  And now, PacketExpert™ 10G has been enhanced to support Wirespeed Record and Playback, Simulation of IP Links and Impairments (IPLinkSim™), PacketBroker™ and Y.1564 Testing (ExpertSAM™) test functionalities. These tests are supported on each port independently for Wirespeed Ethernet/VLAN/MPLS/IP/UDP testing.  BERT is implemented for all layers. RFC 2544/Y.1564 is applicable for Layers 2, 2.5, and 3, and Loopback is applicable for Layers 2, 3, and 4.

Also provided is a Command line Interface (CLI) which allows the users to access all the aforementioned functionalities remotely using a TCL client and MAPS™ CLI Server.

GL also offers Touchscreen Handheld PacketExpert™ 10G version of 10G Ethernet/IP Tester with a Tablet PC mounted on PacketExpert™ 10G and this handheld tester is suitable for field testing.

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 i.e. testing individual links/switches, testing local Ethernet/IP networks (LANs), end to end testing of Wide Area Networks (WANs), testing Core/MPLS networks and more.

GL's other Ethernet/IP Tester variants include quad-port PacketExpert™, and HD-PacketExpert™ a higher density 12/24 GigE ports form factor solutions for testing GigE Switches, Routers and Network conditions.

GL also provides software only Ethernet IP Test tool referred to as PacketCheck™ a general purpose network performance analysis tool for 10Mbps, 100Mbps and 1Gbps networks.

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Brief Description on Functionalities Added

Wirespeed Record and Playback at 10 Gbps/1 Gbps

Wirespeed Record application supports capturing traffic on both the 1G and 10G ports at full line rate simultaneously (10 Gbps * 2/1 Gbps *2), without disturbing the link. Internal 8GB of DDR3 memory allows capturing up to 8GB of traffic (from both ports) at full Wirespeed (10 Gbps/1 Gbps). The captured traffic can be transferred to the host PC for offline analysis. Capture formats supported are PCAP, NGPCAP (popular wireshark formats), DAT (GL proprietary Raw format), HDL (GL proprietary PacketScan™ format).

Wirespeed Record Application

Continuous capture can be achieved by "Wirespeed filters" to filter out traffic of interest, and continuously record to file on the hard disk. The limit of capture in this case is only the hard disk space. Up to 32 filters (16 per port) can be defined. Each filter can be operated in either Packet Mode or Raw mode. In Packet mode, Filters can be set on specific header fields like Ethernet Source/Destination address, VLAN Id, MPLS Label, IPv4 Source/Destination Address, UDP Source/Destination port. In Raw mode, user can enter 120 bytes of data and mask, and an offset to filter 120 bytes anywhere within the packet. Wirespeed Record supports all the features of high-end taps.

Wirespeed Playback allows playback of canned traffic files (in PCAP/NGPCAP/DAT/HDL formats) over one/both ports at full 10Gbps rate, allowing real world conditions to be recreated in lab.

Wirespeed Playback Application

An additional application - Record and Playback allows user to continuously record and playback simultaneously on both the ports.

WAN IP Links and Impairment Emulation at 10 Gbps/1 Gbps (IPLinkSim™)

WAN IP Links and Impairment Emulation

IPLinkSim™ emulates a bidirectional IP WAN link with varying capacities from 10 Mbps to 1 Gbps for the electrical interfaces, and up to 10Gbps on the optical interface. Simply connect IPLinkSim™ unit in series with existing optical or electrical links, and introduce any impairment type to test the various applications in the lab prior to live deployment. This application can be used to test performance of applications that uses Ethernet /IP based transport such as Web Services, Email, FTP, Database access, Enterprise Networks, Storage, Cloud Services, VoIP Services, Audio/Video Streaming and so on. It offers an efficient and economical way to emulate terrestrial, wireless, Internet, satellite, or private network links.

IPLinkSim™ can simulate all network impairment conditions of real world networks such as network latency, network delay variation (jitter), bandwidth, congestion, packet loss, packet FCS errors, packet bit errors and others. The link impairments can be applied independently to both directions.

Y.1564 Testing (ExpertSAM™) 

ExpertSAM™ application is used to validate Ethernet Service Level Agreements (SLAs) as per ITU-T Y.1564 standard. It supports the two key Y.1564 subtests, the Service Configuration Test (SCT) and the Service Performance Test (SPT).

Y.1564 (ExpertSAM™) Testing

SLA parameters measured include the Throughput, Frame Transfer Delay (FTD), Frame Delay Variations (FDV), and Frame Loss Ratio (FLR) service acceptance criteria to validate the network path under test. Up to 16 streams can be tested with full Wirespeed (10 Gbps/1 Gbps).

PacketBroker™

The PacketBroker™ application, allows PacketExpert™ to capture packets at Wirespeed (up to 10 Gbps/1 Gbps) non-intrusively over Ethernet (Electrical) and Optical ports at nano-second precision. PacketBroker™ supports both Tapping (Pass through mode), and Tap-Filter-Aggregate-Modification modes.

PacketBroker™ Tap-Filter-Aggregate-Modification modes

As depicted in the above picture, up to 32 Wirespeed filters on each port (16 per port) allows to capture traffic of interest, modify the captured packet to insert useful information such as nanosecond precision timestamp, Port number etc., and forward the modified packet on an output port to be analyzed by packet analysis tools like PacketScan™.

PacketExpert™ operation is bi-directional, which means that both transmission directions are simultaneously processed by the equipment.

Reports

PacketExpert™ 10G includes report generation option to generate consolidated reports in CSV and PDF file formats. The following sample CSV and PDF reports generated for ‘All Ports BERT' test includes Interface, BERT Statistics, Tx/Rx Statistics, Tx/Rx Configuration details for each of the 10G ports.

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Other Important Features

• Comprehensive testing of Wirespeed Ethernet/IP networks up to 10Gbps
• Two Optical 10Gbps 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

For comprehensive information on the applications, user can refer to Next Generation Ethernet/IP Tester web page.

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