Ethernet and IP Testing for Local Area Networks and Wide Area Networks

Welcome to the latest issue of GL's Newsletter providing information and insight into our PC-based Ethernet/IP test tool, called PacketCheck™. A powerful and cost-effective, real-time test and monitoring solution for Local Area Networks (LAN) and Wide Area Networks (WAN).

PacketCheck™

Overview

PacketCheck™ is a PC-based Ethernet and IP test tool that is versatile, simple and cost-effective. It is used to test and verify LANs and WANs. PacketCheck™ can generate and analyze hundreds of Ethernet/IP/UDP streams with user defined MAC/IP addresses from a single PC.

  • Test end-to-end performance, including:
    • Bit error rate test (BERT) from Layers 1 to 4
    • Throughput, packet loss, packet counts, and out of sequence packets
    • Errored packets
    • User definable impairment insertion
    • Independent measurements per stream
    • Start and stop each stream independently at any time
    • Add any number of streams at run time even if some streams have already started
  • Quickly configure hundreds of Ethernet/IP/UDP streams:
    • Create 100+ full-duplex streams per PacketCheck™ easily
    • Each stream can be configured as Transmit Only, Receive Only, or Transmit and Receive
    • Ability to copy from one stream to another (both one-to-one copy and one-to-many copy) to quickly configure multiple streams
    • Define unique MAC/IP addresses for each stream
    • Define separate Frame size/Rate for each stream
  • Confirm multi stream and multi destination connectivity among all nodes:
    • Control transmit and receive streams independently
    • Ability to resolve IP Address to MAC address (based on Address Resolution Protocol (ARP)) for all streams with a single click, so that all streams are configured properly before starting the test
    • Populate switch/router MAC tables and routing tables using the Resolve all streams feature before the starting the test to avoid unnecessary flooding
  • Multi-layer operation:
    • Independently define each stream to operate as Layer2 (Ethernet) or Layer3 (IP) or Layer4 (UDP)
    • For Layer3 or Layer4 streams, analyzes the received payload based on the IP or UDP length and ignore any MAC padded bytes added in transit
  • Bandwidth Control:
    • Define the frame size/rate to be generated for each stream Independently
    • Frame sizes from 22 bytes up to 1518 supported
    • Up to 500 Mbps total combined rate (all streams combined) is possible
    • Jumbo frames also supported
    • The transmission rate can be configured to operate in 2 modes – Burst mode or Inter Frame Gap (IFG) mode
    • In Burst mode, each stream's rate can be set in Mbps, Kbps, etc.
    • Burst mode tries to generate traffic with the configured rate, but also as smoothly and evenly distributed so that the Device Under Test (DUT) node buffers do not overflow due to a temporary spike in the peak traffic
    • In IFG mode, the Inter Frame gap in milliseconds can be configured. The estimated rate achievable based on the IFG and the frame size is displayed for user convenience
  • Use a full-featured version or a loopback only version (with address swapping) at node endpoints
  • Measure one-way or roundtrip delay automatically

The application supports Ethernet testing at all protocol layers - from raw Ethernet frames to stacked VLAN, stacked MPLS, and IP packets with UDP payloads. PacketCheck™ uses the PC’s Network Interface Card (NIC) to transmit and receive Ethernet or IP packets over LANs and WANs.

Additional features include traffic simulation by the transmission of pre-recorded files and traffic generation with IFG of up to 5 millisecond accuracies. BER testing capability with PRBS patterns or user-defined test patterns.


Multilink Frame Relay (MFR) IP PacketCheck™

PacketCheck™ work with MFR. A traffic option called MFR-IP-PacketCheck™ allows IP traffic generation over Frame Relay (FR) links. Multiple IP traffic streams can be generated and processed over multiple Virtual Channels created within the FR links. Each IP traffic stream can be configured to modify the IP packets with desired custom headers to emulate various modes (Bridge and Route).

MFR-IP-PacketCheck™ traffic is used to generate and receive IP packet streams to and from an FR router. The FR Router can be tested for routing the received packets to the proper destination.

MFR-IP-PacketCheck™ Traffic

MFR-IP-PacketCheck™ Traffic


Other Features

  • Generate/receive Ethernet or IP traffic of up to 500 Mbps bandwidth
  • Supports minimum line rate of 64 bps (bits per second)
  • Generates full-duplex Ethernet, IP, or UDP traffic to Tx and/or Rx traffic on any layer (Layer 1, Data Link with stacked VLAN/ MPLS, Network, Transport) with on-demand bandwidth
  • Supports stacked VLAN (up to 3 stacks) and customizable stacked MPLS (up to 3 stacks)
  • Measures throughput, round trip delay, one-way delay, total packets, packet loss, out of sequence frames, error frames, correct pattern frames
  • BER Testing - bit error rate, sync loss count, bit error count, PRBS pattern generation/verification of various patterns such as QRSS, 26-1, 29-1, 211-1, 215-1, 220-1, 223-1
  • Generate run-time impairments including the ability to insert or delete bytes, and byte-level impairments (AND, OR, and XOR)
  • Displays stream-wise and aggregated statistics
  • Generate test reports in XML or PDF formats


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