Overview
The MLPPP Analyzer captures a host of PPP protocols exchanged between the two nodes over T1/E1 links & provides useful
analysis, which includes distribution of protocols, protocol fields, frame lengths and frame status. The MLPPP Analyzer has the ability to
decode PPP, MLPPP and MC-MLPPP packets.
User can obtain detailed analysis of the protocol and can perform various statistics measurements. GL Communications supports
the following types of MLPPP analyzers:
- Real-time MLPPP Analyzer (Pre-requisites: GL's field proven E1 or T1 internal cards or USB Laptop E1 or T1 external units, required
licenses and Windows 2000/XP/Vista Operating System)
- Offline/Remote MLPPP Analyzer (Pre-requisites: Hardware Dongle and Windows 2000/XP/Vista Operating System)
Screen Shot of ML-PPP Analyzer Main Window
In addition, GL’s T1E1 Analyzer includes client-server based MC-MLPPP Emulator that
can further help in analysis & emulation of MC-MLPPP, MLPPP, & PPP.
Main Features
- Supports a host of protocols PPP, MLPPP, Multi-class MLPPP, IPCP, BCP, BPDU, PAP, CHAP, HTTP, SNMP, STUN, FTP, DNS, and DHCP
- Ability to test and perform numerous measurements across WAN- LAN or LAN-LAN connection
- Ability to test and analyze HDLC based PPP protocol in synchronous environment
- Search and filtering capabilities for both real-time as well as offline analysis.
- Provides Summary, Detail, Statistics, and Hex dump views.
- Summary view provides the information about few important fields (Dev #, Time Slot, Layer 3 Protocol, LCP message type and
higher protocol specific information like Destination and Source IP address, Destination and Source TCP as well as UDP port details,
HTTP/FTP message type, and so on)
- Statistics view displays statistics based on frame count, byte count, frames/sec, bytes/sec etc for the entire capture data.
- Hex Dump View displays raw frame data as hexadecimal and ASCII octet dump.
- Detailed view displays decodes of user-selected frames.
- Supports decoding of frames with two MLPPP layers
- Detailed information of all the captured Frames or only the filtered frames can be exported to ASCII file for the further off-line
analysis and printed.
- Capability to export summary as well as detail information to an ASCII file for subsequent import into a database or spreadsheet
- Multiple bundle of ML-PPP traffic on various T1/E1 channels can be simultaneously decoded with-in same or different GUI instances
- Ability to configure .INI file to customize sequence fragment format
- Remote monitoring capability using GL's Network Surveillance System
Additional features supported by ML-PPP Real-time analyzer:
- A single instance of the analyzer supports reassembly and decoding of multiple MLPPP bundles simultaneously. Each MLPPP
bundle is created by selecting groups of timeslots on various cards. Each group of timeslot selection can have different data rates.
- Supports CRC selection with CRC-16, CRC-32, and CRC-NONE options for each link in MLPPP bundle
- Various data transmission rates starting from fractional DS0 to DS1 (subchannels) are supported. Frames can be
transmitted/captured in either, n x 64 kbps, or n x 56 kbps data channels
- The other variations accommodated in the software are inverted or non-inverted data, byte reversal or non-reversal, and
MLPPP options such as fragment format (long or short), & maximum differential delay.
- Ability to capture and decode both PPP routed protocols, PPP bridged protocols , MLPPP and MC-MLPPP streams of data.
- User can decode frames from the recorded trace files and can be played back using HDLC playback application.
Additional features supported by Offline ML-PPP Analyzer:
- Trace files for analysis can be loaded through simple command-line arguments
- Multiple trace files can be loaded simultaneously with different GUI instances for offline analysis
References
- RFC 1661 PPP links in HDLC framing
- RFC 1662 PPP links in HDLC framing
- RFC1990 Multi-link PPP bundles
- RFC2686 Multi-class extensions to PPP
Protocols Supported
The list of protocols that are supported by GL's ML-PPP analyzer are as given below:
- LCP (Link control Protocol)
LCP is responsible for establishment, release and maintenance of PPP
link between two PPP nodes. LCP also helps in selection of encapsulation format while exchanging layer3 information, selection
of authentication protocol for the peer entity, determining the packet size limit etc.
- Authentication Protocol
PPP provides two types of authentication protocol.
- PAP - Password Authentication Protocol is used by the peer entity to establish its identity in
PPP session. It usually occurs just after the link establishment phase.
- CHAP - Challenge Authentication Protocol is used to periodically verify the identity of the peer.
It can be initiated at any time during a ongoing PPP session.
- Link Quality Report (LQR)
LQR helps in monitoring the quality of PPP link. Packets are sometimes
dropped or corrupted because of noise and equipment problem. LQR helps in sorting out such links so that traffic can be re-routed
to alternate links if necessary.
- Bridging PDU (BPDU)
BPDU encapsulates other higher layer protocol e.g IP based protocols. This
protocol enables the interconnection between two remote LANs via PPP link.
- MLPPP
MLPPP bundles multiple link-layer channels into a single network-layer channel. Data sent
through this channel will be distributed among all the links in Get queued Bytes Fashion.
- MC-MLPPP
The Multi-Class Extension to Multi-Link PPP allows a sender to fragment the packets of
various priorities into multiple classes of fragments. This allows high-priority packets to be sent between fragments of
lower priorities.
- NCP
Network control protocol enables the selection of specific options and control protocols at
connection time across LAN-WAN connection. This means that network administrators do not have to statically configure the
router interface for remote interfaces. Rather, remote interfaces negotiate the link at connection time. NCP supports two types of
protocols, namely, IPCP and BCP.
- IPCP (Internet Protocol Control Protocol): The IP Control Protocol (IPCP) is responsible for configuring,
enabling, and disabling the IP protocol modules on either ends of the point-to-point link. IPCP uses the same packet exchange
mechanism as the Link Control Protocol (LCP).
- BCP (Bridging Control Protocol): The Bridging Control Protocol (BCP) is responsible for configuring,
enabling and disabling the bridge protocol modules on both ends of the PPP link. BCP uses the same packet exchange mechanism
as the Link Control Protocol (LCP).
- SNMP
Enables the administrator to collect the different management information from any network
node in a network. Each node maintains a MIB (Management information Base) and SNMP agent. The later collects the MIB
information from the device and make them available to network management system (NMS) via SNMP protocol. GL's ML-PPP Analyzer
supports SNMPv1 and SNMPv2.
- DNS
The Domain Name System (DNS) is a distributed internet directory service. DNS is used mostly
to translate between domain names and IP addresses, and to control email delivery. The DNS system consists of three
components: DNS data (called resource records), servers (called name servers), and Internet protocols for fetching data from
the servers. The billions of resource records in the DNS are split into millions of files called zones. Zones are kept on authoritative
servers distributed all over the Internet, which answer queries based on the resource records stored in the zones.
- DHCP
The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) is an Internet protocol for automating
the configuration of computers that use TCP/IP. DHCP can be used to automatically assign IP addresses, to deliver TCP/IP stack
configuration parameters such as the subnet mask and default router, and to provide other configuration information such as the
addresses for printer, time and news servers.
- STUN
The STUN protocol enables a SIP client to discover whether it is behind a NAT, and to
determine the type of NAT. The STUN proposal defines a special STUN server in the public address space to inform the STUN-enabled
SIP client in the corporate (private) address space of the Public NAT IP address and port being used for that particular session.
- HTTP
Application protocol for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems and
involves MIME like communication between user agent (UA) and origin server identified by URI. GL's ML-PPP Analyzer supports
HTTP 1.1 and HTTP 1.0
- FTP
FTP, enables the data transfer between one user (PC) to another remote user (PC) over IP.
It defines a set of commands and replies exchanged between the two users over control connection. A separate full duplex data
connection is opened between the two communicating user for actual data transfer.
- ICMP
IP network doesn't ensure the reliable transfer of datagrams. Some packets are often lost
during transmission. So there should be some mechanism to report any problems in the IP network. The ICMP messages typically
report errors in the processing of datagrams.
- SMTP
SMTP (Simple Message Transfer Protocol) is mail transfer protocols that transport the mail
reliably and efficiently via Internet. When a SMTP client has a message to transmit, it opens a duplex connection with the server
and transfers the message using IP/TCP.
- POP3
Post Office Protocol- Version 3 is the mail retrieving protocol used by the client to retrieve
the mails from the server. Initially, the server host starts the POP3 service by listening on TCP port 110. When a client host
wishes to make use of the service, it establishes a TCP connection with the server host. When the connection is established,
the POP3 server sends a greeting. The client and POP3 server then exchange commands and responses until the connection is
closed.
Summary, Detail and Hexdump Views
The ML-PPP analyzer application is invoked from the main menu of GL's T1/E1 Analyzer for real-time analyzer. The offline ML-PPP
analyzer is invoked from the installation directory of the offline ML-PPP Analyzer. The analyzer displays summary, detail, call trace,
statistics, and hex dump views in different panes. The summary pane displays Dev#, Time Slot, Sub Channel, Frame #, Time relative,
Len, Error, Layer 3 protocol, LCP code, Seq No, Class, IPCP code, BCP code, Class, PPP Message type, Source/Destination IP
address, TCP Source/Destination Port, UDP Source/Destination Port, and so on. The User can select a frame in
summary view to analyze and decode each frame in the detail view. The Hex dump view displays the frame information in HEX and
ASCII format.
Screen Shot of Summary, Detail and Hexdump Views
Real-time and Offline Analysis
The application supports reassembly and decoding of multiple MLPPP bundles simultaneously. Each MLPPP bundle will
reassemble packets from PPP links. Multiple cards can be selected for a single instance of analyzer to capture the frames
simultaneously. Users can capture and analyze PPP frames carried on n*DS0 channel in real-time and record all or filtered
traffic into a trace file. The recorded trace file can then be analyzed offline and exported to ASCII file, or printed.
The real-time capturing requires users to specify timeslots, bit inversion, octet bit reversion, user/network side, hyper
channel selection, CRC, and mlppp options such as Fragment format & Maximum differential delay. The maximum delay value (that
is the maximum time the analyzer waits for the reassembly of the MLPPP fragment) allows minimizing the sequence loss.
The captured raw data can then be transmitted using HDLC Playback-file application.
Screen Shot of Timeslot selection
Filtering and Search
Users can record all or filtered traffic into a trace file. Filtering and search capability adds a powerful dimension to the ML-PPP
Analyzer. This feature can isolate required frames from the captured frames in real-time, as well as offline. In real-time capturing,
filter based on length of frames can be set. The frames can also be filtered after completion of capture based on Frame Number,
Time, Length, Error, Layer3 Protocol, LCP Code, IPCP code, Sequence number, Mlppp class, TCP and UDP source and destination
port ,PPP Message type, and so on. Similarly, Search capability helps user to search for a particular frame based on specific search
criteria.
Screen Shot of Setting the Offline Filtering Criteria
Screen Shot of Setting the Real-time Capture Filter
Statistics View
Statistics is an important feature available in ML-PPP analyzer and can be obtained for all frames both in real-time as well as
offline mode. Numerous statistics can be obtained to study the performance and trend in the PPP network and it is based on
protocol fields and different parameters e.g. User Type (Key/Total/Field), Statistic type (Frame count, Byte count, Frames/Sec)
and patterns like Range List, Wild card.
Screen Shot of Statistics Window
Enhanced Trace Saving Options
Users can control the captured trace files by saving the trace using different conventions such as trace files with user-defined
prefixes, trace file with date-time prefixes, and slider control to indicate the total number of files, file size, frame count, or time limit.
This feature also allows the captured frames to be saved into a trace file based on the filtering criteria set using display filter feature.
Screen Shot of Enhanced Trace Saving Options Window
Save/Load All Configuration Settings
Protocol Configuration window provides a consolidated interface for all the important settings required in the analyzer. This
includes various options such as protocol selection, startup options, stream/interface selection, filter/search criteria and so on.
All the configuration settings done in any of these options can be saved to a file, loaded from a configuration file, or user may
just revert to the default values using the default option.
Screen Shot of Save/Load All Configuration Settings Window
Screenshots
Screen Shot of ML-PPP Analyzer showing HTTP Protocol Decode
Screen Shot of ML-PPP Analyzer showing LCP Protocol Decode
Screen Shot of ML-PPP Analyzer showing ICMP Protocol Decode
Screen Shot of ML-PPP Analyzer showing BPDU Protocol Decode
Buyer's Guide:
Please Note: The XX in the Item No. refers to the hardware platform, listed at the bottom of the Buyer's Guide,
which the software will be running on. Therefore, XX can either be HDT, HDE, HUT, HUE, UTA or UEA depending upon
the hardware.
* Specifications and features subject to change without notice.
Back to MLPPP Analyzer and Emulator Page
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