Network traffic simulator

Wed May 25 20:34:39 UTC 2016

Hi,

This depends very much on which Ixia product you're using. In IxExplorer and IxNetwork require a lot of manual labor when setting up a test. IxLoad has a little less, but still. It is important to realize that most of the tests can be automated using TCL scripts. The company I'm currently with has an entire team doing nothing but test automation using Ixia TCL.

Before the N2X acquisition by Ixia, I used both when I was still at Redback Networks. For access related test cases I found both of them to be equally suitable, with a slight preference towards IxNetwork because of their more intuitive gui.

And pricing... yes, test gear is very expensive. But I guess that's because the market is pretty much dominated by Ixia and Spirent these days. 

Thanks,

Sabri

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Saku Ytti" <saku at ytti.fi>
> To: "Spencer Ryan" <sryan at arbor.net>
> Cc: "NANOG" <nanog at nanog.org>, "Mitchell Lewis" <mitchell at dash-networks.com>
> Sent: Wednesday, May 25, 2016 12:14:05 AM
> Subject: Re: Network traffic simulator

> Ugh. In all cases below, where it says Agilent it should say IXIA.
> 
>> Many times in QoS testing you'd have EF, AF, BE
>> traffic, and you have expectation how many percentage in given
>> situation should given class drop, doing this in Agilent is a chore.
>>
>> Agilent probably has best in the breed network with emulation
>> capabilities. And focus generally seems to be in protocol
>> testing/development where network emulation is tremendously useful.
>>
>> As the platforms are very expensive, not many SPs are using them, so
>> they're not getting input from SPs what the boxes should be doing.
>> This market is very poorly tapped, there is large demand in the market
>> for proper testing equipment but it's just priced out of reach. I
>> believe Spirent and Agilent should sell the hardware at-cost, then
>> sell timed licenses, where maybe 1000h license would be today's full
>> cost. Large segment of this market might not use box at all in some
>> year and would generally only require modest hours from it.
>> Bit harder to justify the cost with low use, compared to vendors who
>> run them automated 24/7.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> --
>   ++ytti