The Light Reading metro/edge router test

Designed to illustrate the performance of various vendors' abilities to implement the diverse set of capabilities required for the metro/edge router market, this grueling test enabled participating equipment manufacturers to showcase their solutions in terms of service capabilities, protocol coverage, and interface support.

"Any carrier interested in deploying edge routers should be interested in the results of the test presented by Light Reading," said Neil Anderson, senior director of Advanced Test Programs, Spirent Communications. "Equipment manufacturers will also find timely information on how to test their gear under rigorous conditions of functionality and scalability, giving them a better chance of competing in these tough market conditions."

In this first of its kind public test, several of the Spirent award-winning AX/4000 Broadband Test Systems were used to build the test infrastructure. Spirent also played an integral role in creating the test methodology with independent test lab, Network Test.

This project marks the 4th multi-vendor industry test undertaken by the Spirent/Light Reading/Network Test collaboration, spearheaded by Spirent's Advanced Test Programs (ATP). Network equipment manufacturers taking part in the event included Laurel and Redback.

The Light Reading metro/edge router test is published on the Light Reading Web site (www.lightreading.com), providing the industry with access to valuable information about the current state of edge router technology.

This information is increasingly important as service providers and carriers incrementally upgrade their networks and evaluate service creation and management technologies for metro/edge routers. Such upgrades often require VPN services including RFC 2547 and Martini, multicast support, IP Internet connectivity and service differentiation (DiffServ). Metro routers are now being tasked with bridging today's network technologies while allowing new IP service creation. It is critically important that these routers be thoroughly tested.

The Light Reading metro/edge router test is published on the Light Reading Web site (http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?site=testing&doc_id=25454), providing the industry with access to valuable information about the current state of edge router technology.

Testing components provided by Spirent included:

• DS3, Gigabit Ethernet and OC-48 POS interfaces on the AX/4000
• New VPN technologies - RFC 2547 and Martini
• Control plane scalability
• Multicast
• DiffServ
• IP traffic forwarding

"Spirent supported a truly massive undertaking," said David Newman, president of Network Test, the lab that conducted the evaluation. "We scaled several technologies to unprecedented levels, including layer-2 and layer-3 VPNs and all the major IP routing protocols. Spirent's support went far beyond supplying its AX/4000 platform; the company also supplied considerable expertise, including more than 40 engineers and project managers, all dedicated to the success of this project."

Router Test Service Packages Offered

The wealth of information accumulated during the test is now available in the form of Router Test Service Packages from Spirent. The packages include a set of test methodologies which will allow a common benchmark for testing and evaluating products to ensure the highest quality. Additionally, the Spirent Professional Services team will work closely with customers to implement and analyze their own edge router tests, saving customers considerable time and money when compared to developing a similar effort in-house.

This testing could serve as the basis for a product evaluation for marketing purposes, for a service provider/carrier product advanced research/acceptance lab, or as the basis for a quality-assurance regression test bed. Spirent's flexible, three-tiered service offering includes training, setup and configuration, scripting development and troubleshooting, equipment, consulting, a test summary and results interpretation.

Spirent will be offering free downloads of the Light Reading edge router test scripts from the Spirent Communications' Developers Network (SCDN) Web site.

About Spirent Communications

Spirent Communications is a worldwide provider of integrated performance analysis and service assurance systems for next-generation network technologies. Spirent's solutions accelerate the profitable development and deployment of network equipment and services by emulating real-world conditions in the lab and assuring end-to-end performance of large-scale networks.