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Ethernet protocol analysis – more important than ever
Ethernet continues to expand into new markets and incorporate new protocols. The increasing adoption of lossless Ethernet standards like FCoE, RoCE, and NVMf, along with the rise in Ethernet line-rates to 800Gbps – and soon 1.6Tbps – presents significant test and validation challenges.
The rapid advance has outpaced most legacy test tools leaving them outdated and incomplete for Ethernet product developers and the ecosystem striving to deliver next-generation solutions. Teledyne LeCroy addresses these needs with its extensive experience in high-speed serial data analysis tools, widely used by companies developing products for NAS, SAN, LAN, and other high-speed protocol environments.
The SierraNet family of Ethernet protocol analyzers offer best-in-class traffic capture, analysis, and manipulation for testing physical link characteristics and application operations. Combined with the Xena Ethernet Traffic Generators, SierraNet is designed to tackle today’s high-speed storage and communications network problems, complementing other tools with industry-leading visibility and utility.
Xena Ethernet Test Platform
SierraNet Protocol Analyzer/Jammer
Xena Ethernet traffic generators and SierraNet protocol analyzers serve complementary roles in network testing and analysis. The Xena generators create traffic to test network conditions as the perfect link partner, while the SierraNet captures all layers of traffic enabling analysis of the overall network performance and the ability to inject errors proving the devices under test can perform in the most rigorous datacenter environments.
Key Facts:
- For testing all Ethernet speeds from 10Mbps to 800Gbps
- Comprehensive Physical Layer 1 and Layer 2-3 testing and automation options
- Two chassis options – fixed 1U desktop or modular 4U rack-mountable
- Choose between over a dozen different traffic generators plus a network emulation solution
- Scalable – supporting up to 72 test ports in one chassis
- Includes all software (plus 3 years SW updates)
Key Facts
- For analyzing and jamming of 10Gbps to 800Gbps Ethernet and 128GFC Gen 8 Fibre Channel data capture and protocol verification
- Advanced multi-state triggering and filtering
- Full Stack (Layers 1-7) line rate capture, analysis, and error injection
- InFusion™ Jammer with comprehensive, multi-condition, multi-state error injection and traffic manipulation
- The industry’s only Layer 1 protocol capture and analyzer with enhanced views for Link Training and Auto Negotiation
- Verification Script Engine™ (VSE) for automated post capture, comprehensive analysis capabilities
The Xena Ethernet Test Platform is used to:
- Generate streams of Ethernet traffic to simulate various conditions for testing
- Simulate high volumes of traffic to evaluate how network devices (switches, routers, firewalls) perform under stress conditions
- Simulate multiple users or devices accessing the network simultaneously to see how it handles loads.
- Measure the maximum data rate that network devices or links can handle to test throughput
- Use the E100 Chimera network emulator’s extensive range of impairments to emulate real-world conditions in the lab.
- Creates different types of traffic with varying priorities to test QoS mechanisms
- Simulates attacks such as Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) or creates traffic patterns that mimic malicious behavior
- Helps create realistic network conditions in a controlled environment as part of network simulation and modelling
SierraNet Protocol Analyzer Jammers are used to:
- Monitor and capture all network traffic for detailed analysis
- Decode and accurately diagnose fabric issues including protocol violations, performance and latency issues, and validate link stability
- Accelerates troubleshooting and identifies the links that are misbehaving
- Verify that data packets conform to required protocol standards and specifications
- Detects and analyzes interoperability issues to ensure different network devices and systems work correctly
- Quality Assurance and validation for Ethernet and Fibre Channel
- Benchmarking and competitive analysis of products
- Allows a complete view of all communications across the fabric
- Detect and analyze security threats such as unauthorized access and suspicious traffic patterns
- Monitor how bandwidth is being used and identify heavy users and applications
- Troubleshooting and field support to diagnose failing links, interoperability issues, and or performance issues of networks
- Automated production testing
Combining Xena & SierraNet
Using the Xena Ethernet Test Platform together with SierraNet protocol analyzers provides a deep dive analysis of network performance and behavior, essential for troubleshooting and optimizing Ethernet devices and networks.
1. Xena TG creates synthetic traffic to test device and network behavior under various conditions. It is an “active” tool that injects traffic into the network for testing load, performance, and resilience.
2. E100 Chimera is a network emulator that makes it easy to add an extensive range of impairments (latency, jitter etc) to accurately emulate real-world conditions in the lab.
3. SierraNet captures and inspects traffic on the wire to analyze network performance and diagnose issues. This tool can be used for link bring up, validation and QA, troubleshooting issues, and as a monitoring device for cybersecurity.
4. InFusion™ (Jammer) Error Injector and Traffic Modifier tool lets users verify real-world fault handling for both Ethernet network and Fibre Channel fabric systems. InFusion sits in the data path on a live system to programmatically alter or corrupt traffic.
Below you can see the Xena traffic generators that the E100 Chimera network emulator and SierraNet protocol analyzers work best with.
| SierraNet Protocol Analysers -> Xena Ethernet Traffic Generators | E100 Chimera 10G - 100G | M328Q 10G - 100G | M328 10G - 100G | T328 10G - 100G | M648 10G - 100G | M1288 50G - 800G |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Z10 Odin 1G - 10G | x | x | x | x | x | |
| Z100 Loki 10G - 100G | x | x | x | x | x | x |
| Z400 Thor 10G - 400G | x | x | x | x | x | x |
| Z800 Freya 50G - 800G | x | x |
LinkExpert™
Use LinkExpert to control both traffic generators and protocol analyzers
LinkExpert is a software application that provides automated hardware control and management of Teledyne LeCroy’s Protocol Analyzers & Exercisers. In addition to being a convenient interface for compliance, conformance and validation tests, it makes it easy to add these tests to an automated regression test process.
Now a new LinkExpert integration enables automated Auto-Negotiation and Link Training (AN/LT) of 800Gbps Ethernet connectivity. This integration makes it easy for engineers to leverage the AN/LT test features of the Z800 Freya 112G SerDes Ethernet traffic generators together with the SierraNet M1288 protocol analyzer.
The result is a unique tool for solving the complex challenges of providing robust, high-speed Ethernet connectivity including:
- Testing each Equalizer Tap to its maximum limit to verify protocol compliance and ensure links re-establish if limits are exceeded.
- Verifying the robustness and stability of the SerDes interface and AN/LT implementation by repeatedly configuring and measuring performance variations.
You can learn more about LinkExpert here:
Key Features of LinkExpert
Auto Negotiation:
- Test all speeds can be negotiated to support backwards compatibility.
- Perform positive and negative FEC settings specifying both FEC settings that should be used and ones that are not allowed
- Test both with and without fall back speeds set
- All tests for a single speed are done before moving onto a new speed to minimize DUT configuration activities
Link Training:
- Test if links can be established starting from any preset to ensure marginal presets aren’t used
- Test reliability of link bring up for each preset to ensure the algorithm consistently arrives at stable settings
- Find boundaries for each of the coefficients to ensure algorithms return a limit before frame lock is lost
Above: Screenshot from LinkExpert showing some of the hundreds of Auto Negotiation and Link Training tests that LinkExpert can run.
Testing AN/LT using LinkExpert
This video shows how LinkExpert can be used to orchestrate auto-negotiation & link training (AN/LT) testing:
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