L2/L3 Testing Vendors - Comments? Praise? Horror Stories?

Thu Oct 18 15:05:03 UTC 2001

Thanks, but those products are not routers and switches... they TEST the
capabilities of routers and switches. I'll try to remember that tidbit of
using routers AND switches. It might come in handy one day... glad you
pointed that one out.  Have you considered the possibility of writing a
white paper on that idea and sharing it with the group?

I'm not an idiot.  In the future, it might be good advice to not assume that
just because you're not familiar with something you know more than someone
else.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Quibell, Marc [mailto:Marc.Quibell at icn.state.ia.us]
> Sent: Thursday, October 18, 2001 10:37 AM
> To: 'tim at eng.bellsouth.net'; NANOG
> Subject: RE: L2/L3 Testing Vendors - Comments? Praise? Horror Stories?
>
>
> Sounds like you need more of highend routers...None of those you mentioned
> mean much to me, I would be looking more in the direction of Lucent,
> Foundry, Riverstone, Cisco...
>
> And for big jobs use seperate products: Switches AND Routers.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tim Irwin [mailto:tim at eng.bellsouth.net]
> Sent: Thursday, October 18, 2001 9:23 AM
> To: NANOG
> Subject: L2/L3 Testing Vendors - Comments? Praise? Horror Stories?
>
>
>
> Looking for comments/experiences/war stories on testing products, such as
> Smartbits, Ixia, Adtech, Agilent, and Ganymede.
>
> Desired functionality:
> L2: 10/100/1000 Ethernet, ATM, FR, POS, PPPoX session generation
> L2.5: MPLS, MPLS-TE
> L3: BGP, OSPF, RSVP, Diff-Serv
> L4-7: closed-loop testing (i.e., effects of TCP windowing and
> other types of
> flow control), VoIP, streaming media, etc.
>
> Not entirely happy with current vendors... Smartbits seems ok for
> L2, but L3
> sucks, often too cumbersome to be productive, and I found some
> descrepancies
> and reporting problems with Smartbits, which makes me not want to
> trust it.
> Agilent seems to be good at L3, but lacks L2 testing
> capabilities.  Ganymede
> is good if you want to test application functionality.  Past
> experience with
> Adtech was L2 only.  No clue who makes anything decent to test MPLS,
> although I believe Agilent does.
>
> Experience with the current vendor market is that they all have their
> strengths, so you really need a mixture of products to do
> adequate testing.
> Just curious if others have similar experiences.  Off-list replies
> welcomed...
>
> Thanks,
> Tim
>
> --
> Tim Irwin, Sr. Engineer
> Architecture & Engineering
> BellSouth.net, Inc.
> e-mail: tim at eng.bellsouth.net
> office: 678.441.7951
>
> "Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to
> pause and reflect."  -Mark Twain
>