Core Functions

VulcanManager is a free Windows-based application for managing Vulcan extreme-performance stateful test platforms. It is used for stateful end-to-end testing of network devices such as firewalls, SSL/TLS proxies, switches, routers, NAT routers, load-balancers, bandwidth shapers, and more.

VulcanManager is suitable for characterizing network baseline performance for TCP. This is done by measuring connection establishment and teardown rates, number of concurrent connections/transactions, packet forwarding rate at large numbers of connections and identify performance bottlenecks.

With Xena’s TLS 1.2 support, users can do TLS performance testing e.g. handshakes per second, TLS throughput, concurrent TLS connections, etc., with different cipher suites and certificate key sizes on a DUT that decrypts traffic on one side and encrypts on the other.

With VulcanAppMix, the platform allows users to run realistic application traffic mixes for performance verification of content-aware networks and application-aware network devices. This is extremely useful when verifying the performance of network security devices with application-awareness, such as next-generation firewalls, IPS, etc., in both network pre-production and post-production phases of enterprises. VulcanManager also allow users to replay their own captured traffic and scale up to millions of connections.

VulcanManager supports ad-hoc test execution and remote management of test equipment located in multiple locations. Xena also offers an open scripting API (ValkyrieCLI) for automated testing.

Application Emulation
VulcanManager lets you create complex traffic scenarios via VulcanAppMix which is a library containing hundreds of pcaps files of real-world applications. This makes it easy to verify the performance of application-aware networks and devices. With VulcanAppMix’s pre-defined library, different traffic mixes can be loaded and customized for various network environments, etc. enterprise environment and financial institutions.

TLS Performance Testing
VulcanManager lets you select TLS as a layer above TCP to carry out performance testing. With different TLS ciphers suites and various key sizes from TLS certificates, you can test TLS performance such as TLS handshakes per second, concurrent TLS connections, TLS throughput, TLS alerts, etc. Easy to configure and use, Xena’s native TLS makes it quick and easy to test a device that acts in TLS proxy mode, where the device decrypts traffic on one side and encrypts on the other.

TCP Traffic Generation
VulcanManager makes it easy to customize TCP connections by modifying the MAC/IP/TCP headers to create variations in the generated packets.
Traffic rates are specified as a percentage of line rate, frames per second or bit-rate, and traffic generation is controlled by a load profile specifying the speed with which connections are established and terminated.
The TCP payload can be automatically generated (random, incrementing) or customized by the user via a graphical payload editor. Payloads can also be loaded from file.

Stateful Payload Replay
VulcanManager allows users to replay their own captured network traffic on the test networks and devices. The replay is done on the Layer-4 payload level and parameters of the layers below are configurable. The replayed traffic can be scaled up to millions of connections for extreme performance verification. Users can define how to duplicate the captured connections/transactions, i.e. with unique MAC and IP addresses.

Generic Load Testing
Using VulcanManager, test engineers can quickly generate millions of TCP flows with specified load profiles and configurable IP/TCP/Payload parameters. Real time statistics and test reports provide an overview of the system or device characteristics.

Multi-user and Port Reservation
VulcanManager supports multi-user environments at the level of per port reservation. Packet Engines (PE’s) can be reserved and allocated individually, depending on the test scenario, for full operational flexibility and performance.

Report Generation
VulcanManager includes a report generation function that makes it easy to document results as attractive, simple-to-view PDFs.

API Scripting Made Easy
ValkyrieCLI is a text-based Command Line Interface (CLI) API that makes test automation easy to script from any scripting environment that supports TCP/IP.

Browser-based UI
For additional testing convenience, VulcanManager can be used via Phantom, enabling engineers to conduct tests via any HTML5-based browser.