Development and pre-deployment testing of new products, applications and technologies

Testing performance, conformance, functionality, security and compliance

Whether developing new products in R & D labs, evaluating new products and technogies for performance and security, or deploying new applications on operational networks, realistic testing is essential. Traffic generation and network simulation are two vital tools that help reduce the cost of new product development and the risk of deploying new technologies and networked applications.

Phoenix Datacom provide a wide range of products appropriate to R&D labs, software development departments and operational enterprise networks.

Benchmarking applications performance before and after changes will help your defence! Whenever you introduce new applications onto an existing network, two questions immediately arise:-

"How will this application perform on my particular network?"

"How will it affect network traffic and the performance of my existing applications?"

In fact, the same questions arise whenever you make changes such as introducing new routers or high speed services. Waiting until you go live to find the answers can be a very costly mistake! Pre-deployment testing reduces that risk by allowing you to run realistic and"worst-case" testing in a controlled way.

Traffic Generation/Simulation Traffic generators have come a long way from the packet blasters of the past and can now simulate the kinds of real world traffic volumes and numbers of online users faced by 21st century networks and services.

Agilent N2X systems stress-test equipment, including switches, routers and server load balancers, networks and services by producing multi-port, multi-interface traffic streams with total control over all traffic parameters such as packet size and variation, errors and losses and data rates. Load modules cater for all major LAN, WAN, ATM and SAN interfaces.>>more

Agilent Network Tester systems provide the most powerful and flexible solution for testing the performance of Layer 4-7 devices and services. NetworkTester creates a realistic mix of application traffic through its unique ability to simultaneously emulate real voice, video, data and multiple DOS, spam and virus attacks on a single test port. Coupled with the ability to simulate proprietary protocols like P2P, gaming and IM, NetworkTester provides the most realistic application performance system in the market. >>more

BreakingPoint Systems range provides very high performance layer 2 to layer 7 testing of content-aware devices and services. A particular strength of the range is the ability to generate a blended mix of good and bad traffic with simultaneous security attacks. More than 60 application protocols, 3,600 live security attacks and 80 evasion techniques are included as standard with weekly updates. BreakingPoint Syatems are ideally suited to testing the performance and functionality of security devices and other content-aware devices under realistic and worst case attack scenarios. The BreakingPoint architecture also provides the accurate high performance needed for 10Gig testing at the application layer - a single appliance having the ability to generate and maintain up to 15 million simultaneous TCP sessions, 1.5 million new TCP sessions per second, 20 gigabits per second of Layer 4-7 traffic and 80 Gigabits per second of Layer 2-3 traffic. >>more

Navtel Interwatch systems cater for extreme testing of Next Generation Networks (NGN) and voice-over-IP systems. A single chassis can provide the "real world" testing needed at every stage from R & D to roll-out - simultaneously testing both signaling and data functionality and performance - with simulation of up to 256,000 unique endpoints with 128,000 RTP streams and thousands of calls per second.>>more

Network Simulation Packetstorm Network Emulator systems provide a "network in a box" which can be used stand-alone or in-circuit with a real network to allow consistent and worst-case testing of networked applications. The Packetstorm system simulates a complete packet-based network with multiple elements in the traffic path (LAN, Router, modem, WAN link etc), each of which can be set with specific parameters for impairments, modifiers and traffic conditioning. Advanced features include:- emulation of Routing & Bridging, Diff Serv with traffic conditioning, ToS emulation, IP monitoring, packet counters and timers, Tcl scripting language, network capture & replay, packet modifiers, multiple LAN, WAN and ATM network interfaces, network queues, and remote control. >>more

Arca WAN link simulators allow cost-effective testing of networked applications across topologies such as ISDN and Frame Relay, the simulator providing all the interfaces and behaviours of the relevant network without the cost of using real networks. >>more

Applications Performance Benchmarking Changes to networks invariably affect performance - and it is the performance of applications as perceived by end-users that is most critical! It is therefore sensible to benchmark applications performance before and after changes. ACE Live from OPNET (developed from Network Physics NetSensory) is ideal for this as it allows you to analyse application performance and differentiate response time issues between client, network, server and application. Better still, it allows you to report by individual user, application or business group of users so it is possible to "fine-tune" network and application performance. >>more

To find out more about Phoenix Datacom products, call Phoenix Datacom on 01296 397711 , send an email or use the Request More Info form.

For a full list of Phoenix Datacom products and applications, click here.