What is Loki?

In Nordic mythology, Loki is the god of mischief. In the world of Ethernet testing, Loki is an important part of the Valkyrie product line, which is Xena’s Ethernet Traffic Generation & Analysis (TGA) solution.

Loki supports testing of NRZ-based Ethernet at data rates of 10G / 25G / 40G / 50G / 100G.

Valkyrie line also includes Odin (NRZ testing 10Mbps to 10G), Thor (NRZ testing 10 to 100G and PAM4 testing 100G to 400G), and Freya (currently PAM4 testing 100G to 800G and in the future also 1.6 Terabit).

Speeds and technology

Loki uses NRZ technology. NRZ modulation has been used for Ethernet signals sent over data lines for many years. NRZ stands for “non-return to zero” – a modulation technique for serial communications that uses two voltage levels to represent logic 0 and logic 1. Loki supports Ethernet testing of NRZ data rates of 10G / 25G / 40G / 50G / 100G.

Hardware

Theere is currently only 1 Loki test module (see table below). It is available in Xena’s fixed 1U chassis: the ValkyrieCompact. Or it can be used in the modular 4U ValkyrieBay chassis.

Software

All Valkyrie solutions include user-friendly software to make it quick and easy to perform a multitude of relevant performance, QA, compliancy and functional testing: ValkyrieManager, applications for automated RFC 2544, Y.1564, RFC 2889 and RFC 3918 testing, ValkyrieCLI and ValkyrieTimeSynch.