Aptixia IxNetwork
Ixia Announces a Major New Release of its IxNetwork testing solution.
In June, Ixia will release a major expansion of its standard-bearing IxNetwork test application. IxNetwork 5.30 builds on its proven, rock-solid architecture with additions in the area of protocols, authentication, broadband access and stateful testing. Productivity improvements have been made throughout IxNetwork, with marked improvements to workflow, automation, application traffic and statistics.In conjunction with Ixia's XM-12 10U-height chassis and XMV16 interface modules, IxNetwork can fully test network devices with 192 Gigabit Ethernet ports from layer 2 through 7. Each XMV16 port is so powerful that only four ports are required to match the scale of the largest Internet core router - all the while emulating multiple routing protocols.
Previously available only as separate Ixia test applications, IxNetwork now includes support for IEEE 802.1x, Cisco Network Admission Control (NAC), and PPP/L2TP broadband access protocols.
Ixia's unique Flow Detective™ solves a difficult problem for test engineers: how to find one data flow out of many thousands with incorrect or poor performance. The Flow Detective™ isolates best/worst performing data flows in real-time. No need to page through spreadsheets or engage in lengthy post-test analysis.
IxNetwork 5.30 is your complete and flexible solution, with:
- Protocol wizards for all supported protocols
- Traffic wizard for easy set-up of traffic through established routes and broadband sessions
- Integrated control plane tests, including session setup and capacity
- Integrated data plane tests, including RFC 2544 and RFC 2899 tests
- Stateful traffic
- Customizable statistics graphs and spreadsheets
- Integrated packet capture and analysis
- Data miner to compare, contrast and re-run tests
Integrated Security and Broadband
The functionality previously available in Ixia's IxAuthenticate is now a part of IxNetwork. Authentication using layer 2 protocols (802.1x with or without NAC) and layer 3 (EAP over UDP with NAC) may now be performed on thousands of emulated interfaces. The setup rate and capacity of network devices can be immediately measured with included control plane tests. Authenticated, emulated sessions may be used for any type of data plane tests - constructed with the traffic wizard and integrated data plane tests.The functionality previously available in Ixia's IxAccess product is now also a part of IxNetwork. PPP and L2TP sessions and tunnels may be established with all supported encapsulations: PPPoE, PPPoA, PPPoEoA, L2TPoE and L2TPoA. Setup rate and capacity can be measured with included control plane tests and data of any type may be sent through established sessions and tunnels. Broadband aggregation devices may be fully characterized and tested with IxNetwork's built-in facilities.
Flow Detective
In order to test routers and other complex network devices fully many data flows involving unique combinations of source/destination MAC/ATM/IP addresses, VLANs and QoS settings are required. The combinations often number into the tens of thousands. When these flows are applied to a Device under Test (DUT), device problems show up as slight changes in latency, delay and received packet counts. It's impossible, in most cases, to page through hundreds of screens of statistics; simplistic sorting of results is also ineffective. Most test equipment vendors must resort to post-test analysis - an inefficient and time consuming operation.IxNetwork's unique Flow Detective™ allows you to display, in real time, the best or worst performing flows for up to 128,000 flows. Best/worst performers can be determined based on minimum, maximum or average latency, last received packet timestamp or received packet count.
The result is that problems immediately bubble up to the top. Problems can be identified on the spot, or further flow refinement can be performed on the fly to further isolate problem areas. The bottom line: high productivity.
Real Triple-Play Application Traffic over Routes
Real-world voice, video and data application traffic may be exchanged through established routes. Data traffic includes emulations for TCP, HTTP, E-mail, Video, RTSP, Telnet and FTP. It's no longer necessary to trust that stateless layer 2/3 packets properly exercise device functionality; test you network infrastructure in the same way that it will be deployed.Integrated Data Capture and Analysis
IxNetwork 5.30 adds the ability to capture line-rate received data traffic as well as bi-directional control plane traffic and to display results with a sophisticated network analysis display. Control plane traffic may be displayed in visual ladder diagrams.BFD and mVPNv6 Protocol Emulations
Ixia's BFD implementation supports both single-hop or multi-hop sessions, asynchronous or on-demand mode, echo functions and IPv4 or IPv6 endpoints. BFD can be run either independently or in conjunction with other routing protocols.The mVPNv6 emulation provides equivalent functionality for IPv6 as was available with mVPNv4. The protocol wizard can configure mVPNs with both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses at the same time.
