Chimera

Network Impairment Emulation

We’re competitive on price. We’re leaders in value.

Three years’ free software upgrades.

Three years’ free hardware warranty.

Free tech support – for the lifetime of the product.

Free online training.

You do the math.

About Chimera

Chimera represents great value with these top features:

True wire-speed impairment @ 100Gbps (plus 50 / 40 /25 & 10Gbps)
Ease of use – Chimera is a stand-alone impairment tool that integrates seamlessly with Xena’s Valkyrie traffic generator, letting you speed up your work flow by using the same SW to both generate and impair Ethernet traffic.
Highest port density in the industry – plus you can reserve individual port-pairs without blocking access to the others
Setting up custom impairment distributions is a breeze
Chimera supports a broad range of impairments (latency/jitter, packet & port impairments, flexible distributions, BW shaping etc)
Powerful, easy-to-use automation & scripting options
A price point 50% below comparable hardware emulators

Chimera makes it easy to emulate network impairment, making it a cost-effective and convenient solution for:

Benchmarking
Stress testing/ Negative testing
“What-if” testing
Regression testing

7 Reasons for choosing Chimera (PDF)

Used to emulate

Latency and jitter in Ethernet traffic

at 10GE, 25GE, 40GE, 50GE and 100GE

Watch On-Demand Webinar

NEW White Paper

5G Fronthaul Network Testing Considerations

This White Paper explains why Ethernet impairment testing is crucial in deploying 5G fronthaul networks, and highlights the protocols that need particular attention when optimizing your equipment or application performance in 5G fronthaul networks.

Download now

System diagram

Chimera can function as a standalone traffic impairment emulator. Or it can be installed in a Valkyrie chassis to seamlessly add impairment to traffic (up to 100GE) being generated by the other Valkyrie test modules.

Software

Chimera in ValkyrieManager

When a Chimera test module is installed in a ValkyrieBay chassis, ValkyrieManager detects its presence and makes the Chimera’s software options available for adding impairment. This makes it very easy for test engineers to emulate impairment via the same GUI they use for generating the stateless Ethernet traffic.

Learn more

Try demo

This diagram illustrates how the Chimera test module emulates impairment. Incoming traffic enters a flow filter and different types of impairment are then added (as defined in the UI), with each traffic flow being processed in a prioritized order.

Two hardware options

Both options below support impairment emulation at all rates from 10GE to 100GE via a single Chimera test module.

TEST MODULE (Chi-100G-5S-2P)

Chimera is currently available as a 2-slot test module for a ValkyrieBay chassis, the Val-C12-2400G, where ValkyrieManager is used to emulate impairment as part of it standard user-interface.

STANDALONE CHASSIS (C-Chi-100G-5S-2P):

ChimeraCompact is a standalone version of Chimera where the test module is installed in a quiet desktop-sized chassis.

VIEW DATASHEET (PDF)

Chimera Videos

See how easy Ethernet impairment emulation can be

A step-by-step guide to how Chimera works using Xena’s live demo system. You can try this yourself right now.

This Chimera video covers:
1. Downloading & installing the Chimera software
2. Connecting to Xena’s live demo system
3. Configuring the Chimera & Loki test modules,
4. Creating traffic streams and mapping the streams to flows, and
5. Adding impairments to the individual flows.

7 min. 54 secs

How to add some basic types of latency and jitter to Ethernet traffic using Chimera.

This video shows you how to add:
– Constant latency
– Step function
– Uniform jitter
– Gaussian jitter

8 min. 30 secs

How to control bandwidth using Chimera.

Shows you how to use Chimera to limit the bandwidth of Ethernet packet flows passing through a device, using the policers and shapers of the impairment pipeline.

8 min. 31 secs

How to filter flows using Chimera.

Shows how Chimera flow filters are used to map incoming packets to up to 8 different flows per port. Each flow can then be independently impaired.

11 min. 20 secs

5G Fronthaul Testing

How and why Xena’s Chimera impairment emulator can help with performance testing of 5G Fronthaul.

36 min. 53 secs

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Latest Features

New features for Chimera (available in Val-85)

The release of Val-85 includes these new features for Chimera:

Support for Chi-40G-2S-2P, the new 2-speed Chimera test module which provides 2 x 40GE ports or 8 x 10GE ports
Emulator bypass mode (sub 1 microsecond delay depending on speed, when Chimera is not being used)

See full Release Notes.

Download Chimera SW

NOTE:

Chimera’s SW is bundled together with ValkyrieManager. To download the full package, click the link above. You will be taken to our Support site where you will need to login (or register to do so) before you can download the software.

If you simply want to try Chimera, its quicker and easier to use Chimera on Xena’s live demo system.

Documentation

All the documentation about Chimera products

Chimera	Factsheet – brief product overview	Datasheet – detailed technical specifications	User Manual – complete details of how to use Chimera
ValkyrieManager	Datasheet	Step by Step Guide	Webpage
Scripting CLI	Datasheet	Scripting Guide	Webpage

Not what you’re looking for? Check our:

Knowledge Base Application Notes White Paper Use Case

Try it now:

Send in the form and we’ll send you instructions on how to access the Chimera test module in our live demo system.

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