Firewall Performance Testing Use Cases in Lab and Production Networks
Firewall Performance Testing Use Cases in Lab and Production Networks
All of Xena’s products can be used for performance testing. This typically includes measuring:
- the volume of data successfully delivered between two points, usually measured in bits or packets per second
- how long it takes data packets to travel between two points in a network or a device, also known as latency
- variations in latency – also known as jitter – due to network congestion or other factors
- how many data packets fail to reach their destination
- if data packets are delivered in a different order from that in which they were sent
Testing can be done with different frame sizes to check how this affects performance. Similarly, the DUT can be loaded beyond its throughput capacity to see how this affects frame loss, latency and jitter.
Valkyrie includes free applications for testing in accordance with IETF RFC 2544, RFC 2889 and RFC 3918. Valkyrie also supports VSperf testing.
Vulcan is Xena solution for Performance testing for layer 4 to 7.
Xena Solutions
… for Performance Testing
Link to: 400GE
VALKYRIE
Valkyrie is a stateless Ethernet traffic generation and analysis platform that supports all types of performance, QoS, conformance and functional testing at all speeds up to 400GE.
Link to: Autoneg & Link Training
VULCAN
Vulcan generates stateful Ethernet traffic to analyze how devices such as firewalls, NICs, packet brokers, NAT routers, bandwidth shapers perform in a wide range of real-world scenarios.
SERVICE PROVIDER
In the highly competitive Service Provider market, success is built on reliably giving users a first-class experience on the latest services for the lowest possible cost.
GPON TESTING
The R&D department of a major NEM in China was developing new GPON ONU access solutions for transportation. To validate the performance of the new products, they needed to generate stateless Ethernet traffic at 100GE, as well as 25GE and 50GE. Two key requirements were that the test equipment should be portable and provide two 100GE ports.
White Papers
… relevant for this type of testing
Time Synchronization
Learn how ValkyrieTimeSynch is used for synchronizing test instruments in different locations using GPS, PTP and NTP.
Putting 2.5GE & 5GE to the Test
This White Paper examines the technical details of the new 2.5 & 5.0GE speeds and then presents Xena’s new Odin-10G-5S-6P-CU test module which can test both the new speeds plus 100Mbit/s, 1GE and 10GE.
IP Multicast
Learn about IP multicast and how Xena’s test solutions are used to verify IP multicast and IGMP performance in accordance with RFC 3918, and perform multicast stress testing and IGMP snooping verification.
The Case for 25GE & 50GE
Data centers are hungry for bandwidth but strapped for cash. Adding more 10GE equipment is a short-term solution but upgrading to 40/100GE is expensive.
Automotive Ethernet Testing
The automotive industry is finally going digital. Initiatives like the BroadR-Reach 100 Mbit/s Automotive Ethernet standard seek to minimize the weight and cost of electrical cabling – now the 3rd largest weight component.
GPON Testing
Gigabit-capable Passive Optical Networks (GPON) support digital communication to end customers at rates up to 2.4 Gbps downstream and 1.2 Gbps (optionally 2.4 Gbps) upstream. A GPON requires active transmission equipment at its borders, and this equipment will of course need to be tested.
GPON Certification with LAN
This White Paper examines the background for BBF.247 testing and how LAN - the Laboratoire des Applications Numériques - uses Xena’s solutions for their formal certification process.
Microburst
Microbursts – where data packets are transmitted in rapid bursts – can lead to periods of full line-rate transmission that overflow packet buffers of the network stack. This can seriously impact network performance but the problem is difficult to detect.
100G PON
Xena's Valkyrie platform made it easy for BT to verify the performance of their new 100G PON solution. PON is an access network technology that ensures high-speed network access to business and private users.
OpenFlow®
Learn about OpenFlow performance testing and how Xena's Valkyrie platforms are used to verify OpenFlow performance of switches in SW-defined networks.
SD-WAN
SD-WANs make it easier to centrally manage WANs spread across a wide area. Learn how Xena's traffic generation and analysis solutions are used to test and verify SD-WANs.
Realistic Application Simulation for Enterprise Firewall Performance Testing
Realistic Application Simulation for Enterprise Firewall Performance Testing - Testing Enterprise Firewall with the correct test traffic
400GE
Learn about the new PAM4 400GE & 200GE data rates and how to verify the performance of network equipment capable of handling the new speeds.
Evaluate Data Center Network Performance
Data center network topology is crucial to latency in the network. Therefore, it is important to know the impact of new topologies before they are deployed.
TCP Testing
TCP turns the ‘best effort’ nature of IP networks into reliable communication services. This White Paper explains how RFC 6349 based TCP throughput tests and stress load tests give network operators valuable information on network TCP performance.
Xena NetworksTesting VNF
This White Paper demonstrates how the goals listed above can be achieved using Xena’s stateless traffic generator on configurations orchestrated by CNLabs NFV Test Framework.
Performance Verification of NGFW
To rigorously test the performance of next generation firewalls (NGFWs), it is no longer enough to bombard them with dummy traffic.
Advanced Layer 4 Replay
Xena Advanced Layer 4 Replay provides stateful replay on top of its high-performance TCP stack, high scalability for performance verification and preserve correlation information across sessions for true emulation.
G.fast
G.fast is a next-gen DSL technology designed to seriously boost signal speeds to customer premises. Learn how Xena test solutions can be used to verify G.fast performance and conformance with Broadband Forum ID-337.
Emulation vs. Simulation for Layer 4-7
Testing with realistic application emulation is about emulating network traffic that contains realistic traffic patterns and content. Which is essential for providing guaranteed Quality-of-Service (QoS), and high degrees of Quality-of-Experience (QoE).
Transport Layer Security
Discover how Vulcan reveals performance bottlenecks of TLS/HTTPS middleboxes/proxies, meets performance testing requirements, and optimizes security parameters.
VSPerf
This White Paper explains how Xena is working with the Open Platform for NFV (OPNFV) community on the vSwitch Performance (VSPerf) project towards a generic architecture-agnostic vSwitch performance benchmarking and test framework.
Application Emulation
Testing with realistic network traffic places the device under test (DUT) in a realistic network environment and delivers authentic results.
Autoneg & Link Training
Discover how Xena's Thor-400G-7S-1P test module supports auto-negotiation and link training for PAM4 data rates up to 400GE.
Performance Characterization of Virtual NGFWs
How to test the performance of virtual enterprise firewalls using Safire.
Latency & Jitter
This White Paper clarifies terms used in time measurement e.g. latency, jitter, inter-frame gap, latency resolution, speed mismatch, latency over time, and distribution and presents how Xena interprets and implements time measurements.
Award Winning Solutions
Xena has won multiple global awards for price/performance and technical innovation. Learn more.
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