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Management, Test Access and Network Performance Solutions for the Enterprise
Network Emulators - 10/100/1000BT, GigE, 10GigE
Network Emulator enables software developers and network engineers to determine how their product or service would perform under various network conditions such as bandwidth, latency, congestion, etc.
As a network impairment generator, it emulates these network conditions by transparently capturing and processing the data packets. Network Emulator can be used for any network protocol (IP, IPX, AppleTalk, etc.) Since it operates at Ethernet layer it does not require any configuration change on networks or servers.
Network Emulator is a patent-pending true wire speed (1.4 million pps per port), highly precise, multi-user, multi-port and portable appliance which uses patent-pending technologies. It is available in several different models to meet various user requirements and budget.
Key Benefits
- Speeds up network testing of the network application, equipment or the service.
- Increases the success by delivering fully tested products and services.
- Minimizes the cost and wasted time by finding and eliminating software bugs faster.
- Provides detailed quality assurance (QA) of network applications and network equipment.
- Minimizes the bandwidth cost by accurately determining bandwidth requirements.
- Allows determining VoIP and video conferencing performance characteristics in a laboratory environment.
- With multi-port model, it allows emulations on redundant, backup and multi-home connections.
- Allows multiple users to run independent emulations or traffic generations at the same time.
- Allows evaluating emerging applications, products and standards realistically.
General Features
- Patent-pending wire speed emulations (1.4 million pps/port/direction) without missing any packet.
- Supports all network protocols and applications, such as IP, TCP, HTTP, VoIP, etc.
- Supports all network connection types, point-to-point, hub and spoke, partially or fully meshed.
- Supports all server hardware and operating systems.
- Works at Ethernet level not IP level. (I.e. switching instead of routing).
- Portable for sharing and carrying easily.
- Displays throughput in bits/second and packets/second in both directions of the traffic.
- Does not require a dedicated host or special GUI application.
- Easy to learn, configure and use via a web browser interface.
- Does not need any modifications in network configuration.
- Provides flexible unidirectional emulations.
- Supports several types of packet filters.
- Supports 64 DiffServ filter levels.
- Provides custom filters with up to 4-byte long pattern matching anywhere in the packet.
- Provides up to 32 simultaneous multiple emulations.
- Provides stacked MPLS and VLAN (Q in Q) emulations.
- Provides real-time packet modifications.
- Provides wire-mode operation.
- Provides real-time packet analysis with packet filters on every interface.
- Provides real-time throughput in bps and pps displays in tabular and graphical formats.
- Provides web based remote management.
- Allows saving, loading or deleting multiple configurations.
- Provides Command Line Interface (CLI).
- Provides on-line Hypertext User Guide.
Plug & Play Setup
Since Network Emulator works at the Ethernet level, it does not require any change on the application servers or on the network configurations. Network Emulator starts forwarding the traffic between its two ports soon after it is powered on. The user only needs to setup the management interface's IP address. This can be accomplished via the Web interface by connecting to the system's factory shipped IP address.
In-line Management
In-line management is a feature of having the management interface on any port and in-line with the test traffic. This feature allows users to connect the network emulator between their workstations and the device under test without requiring an additional management network cable. In-line management is available on all Network Emulator models.
XML Based Filters
Network Emulator has extensive XML based packet filters for Ethernet, IP, IPV6, TCP and UDP packet filtering. Filters allow users to pick significant packets to expose to network impairments. They can be logically combined with AND, OR and NOT operators to create complex filter sets.
XML based packet filtering allows users to define any type of packet filter in an XML file. Newly defined filters can be used instantly in the web based filters page. This filtering method provides capability of easily defining packet filters for new implementations such as IPTV, iSCSI, IPV6, 4G.
In addition, Custom Filters provides filtering anywhere inside the packet including payload for deep packet inspection.
XML based filters can easily be created by editing the configuration file. Below shows a iSCSI filter for filtering iSCSI messages:
<header name="iSCSI">
<label>iSCSI packets</label>
<filter>tcp[0:2] = 3260</filter>
<label>iSCSI opcode</label>
<operator name="iscsi_opcode" title="iSCSI OPCODES=
0x00 NOP-Out,
0x01 SCSI Command,
0x03 Login Request,
0x04 Text Request,
0x05 SCSI Data-Out,
0x06 Logout Request,
0x10 SNACK Request,
0x20 NOP-In,
0x21 SCSI Response,
0x22 SCSI Task Management function response,
0x23 Login Response,
0x24 Text Response,
0x25 SCSI Data-In,
0x26 Logout Response,
0x31 Ready To Transfer,
0x32 Asynchronous Message,
0x3f Reject
"> 0x00, 0x01, 0x03, 0x04, 0x05, 0x06, 0x10, 0x20, 0x21, 0x22, 0x23, 0x24, 0x25, 0x26, 0x31, 0x32, 0x3f</operator>
<filter>tcp[32] amp; 0x3fff = $iscsi_opcode</filter>
Multiple Link (Simultaneous) Emulations
Network Emulator has patent-pending technology that allows users to emulate up to 16 different network characteristics simultaneously through the same pair of Ethernet interfaces. By the help of filters assigned to emulation instances, users can divide the traffic into several groups and apply different network impairments on them. This capability does not require any change in the network connections since all of the traffic goes through the same network interfaces.
Packet Modifications
Network Emulator allows users to modify data packets in real-time. Any protocol field can be modified with user selectable data. It is possible to optionally recompute the checksums.
With custom packet modifications, it is even possible to modify anywhere inside the packet, e.g. payloads or certain fields in proprietary protocols. Packet modifications can be utilized with filtering and emulations at the same time.
MPLS
Simena also provides extensive MPLS support in all network emulator and traffic generator products. This feature help users to filter, modify, inject MPLS and stacked MPLS packets. Users also can create impairments in MPLS traffic. MPLS is available as part of the standard software without any additional cost.
IPV6
Network Emulator's IPV6 capabilities enable users to perform detailed IPV6 emulation tests. IPV6 filters such as "traffic class", "flow label", "hop limit" allow picking specific IPV6 packets. Source and destination addresses can be either single or a range that covers block of addresses. Non-consecutive addresses can also be specified by using multiple filters. "next header" filter parses all available cascaded headers till it finds a match. In addition, "fragmentation ID" filter can be used to filter all or some of the specific fragmented packets
Mesh Network Emulation
Network Emulator also provides emulating either partially or fully meshed networks. As it is shown in the diagram above, users can create any type of unidirectional virtual connections among all available Ethernet interfaces.
Each virtual mesh connection is associated with filters to determine which packets should be sent to which virtual connections. This would give the ultimate flexibility to create any type of connection topology, ring, mesh, star, or fully connected. Any combination of impairments can be assigned to virtual mesh connections. Network statistics can be collected for each individual virtual connection.
Real-time Statistics
Users can also easily display real-time throughput on each port in both tabular or graphical format. Throughput numbers are very accurate as they are collected from the Network Emulator's kernel application. In other words, while the emulation is heavily taking place the throughput numbers would still be very reliable.
Tabular statistics can be saved as a CSV file at the user workstations (PC. Linux, Solaris, Mac) for further analysis. Users can specify the sampling rate and number of samples for saving the statistics.
Online Help
Although Network Emulator is very easy to learn and use it provides an online user guide for complex emulations and administration tasks. Hypertext index lets the user navigate very easily. Convenient pop-up window can be used as a desktop reference.
Web Based GUI
Network Emulator provides easy to use Web based Graphical User Interface (GUI) which lets the users access it from anywhere in the network. Clear and easy navigation menu enables them to start using the unit in a minute. The GUI also provides complete management functions such as setting networking parameters, Ethernet interface speed and duplex mode, date and time, user password, and rebooting the Network Emulator remotely. Initial setup of the Network Emulator can also be accomplished by the GUI by accessing the unit's factory default IP address.
