Agilent N2X

• N2X system release 6.10 - March, 2008
• N2X Conformance Test Suites (CTS) 6.01 - December, 2007
• N2X IPTV Quality of Experience Test Solution for IPv6 - November, 2007

N2X Fast Find Measurement Analysis

N2X Fast Find enhances statistical analysis for large-scale tests, easing the filtering, sorting, analysis, and reporting of millions of statistical records from multiple test ports.

Ethernet OAM

The Ethernet OAM Fault Management software allows you to emulate an:

• Ethernet Network OAM topology for Continuity Check Data Base (CCDB) creation and maintenance
• Ethernet OAM Link Trace Message (LTM) initiator device
• Ethernet OAM Loopback Message (LBM) initiator device
• Ethernet OAM Test Message (TST) initiator device (available with E5585A only)

You can emulate thousands of Maintenance Entities across multiple MEG/MD levels, simulating network faults and diagnosing problems.

Bi-directional Capture

This release provides the third-party capture tool called WireShark, integrating its powerful bi-directional capturing, filtering, and analysis into an N2X view.

Scalable BGP-4

This release provides scaled BGP-4 routing, with BGP-4 session pools, BGP-4 route profiles, and VPN route profiles to simulate thousands of routes in a few mouse clicks.

IGMP over PPPoA and PPPoEoA

With Release 6.9, you could simulate devices that used IP addresses obtained by PPPoE or DHCP for IGMP multicasting. Release 6.10 extends this capability to include PPPoA and PPPoEoA.

Protocol emulation over LACP Link Bundles

Added Layer 2 protocol emulation support in order to complement the existing Layer 3 protocol solutions. Two new API objects have been added:

• AgtLagLacp
• AgtLagList

10G Frame Relay

The following 10G test cards now support Frame Relay:

• N5602A XR-2 UniPHY Ethernet/POS/Frame Relay
• N5632A XS-2 UniPHY Ethernet/POS/Frame Relay

New Japanese User's Guide

N2X now provides a new Japanese User's Guide, which has been updated for Release 6.10.

Other Enhancements

• Laptop system controller
  The Dell D620 laptop system controller has been replaced with a newer Dell D630 laptop (N5543D).
• BGP-4 Generic Receiver
  New API methods have been added to AgtBgp4Session to support BGP-4 Update message capture: AddUpdateMessageCaptureFilter, ListUpdateMessageCaptureFilters, RemoveUpdateMessageCaptureFilter.
• IS-IS authentication
  New API methods and parameters have been added to AgtIsisSession to support IS-IS authentication.
• IGMP/MLD emulation states
  In previous releases, you could display individual IGMP and MLD emulation states by using the Group Membership Profiles dialog box > State tab. With this release, this information is now displayed through either the:
  • IGMP Host/Querier Instances dialog box > IGMP Host/Querier State tab
  • MLD Host/Querier Instances dialog box > MLD Host/Querier State tab
• DHCP assigned prefixes
  DHCP servers can now assign IP addresses with previously configured, advertised, or DUID-based prefixes. For details, see either:
  • DHCP Server Properties dialog box > DHCP Server tab > IP Address Pool
  • DHCPv6 Server Properties dialog box > DHCPv6 Server tab > IPv6 Address Pool & IPv6 Prefix Pool
• PPPoX
  • Authentication
    You can generate more variable user names, domains, and passwords for simulated PPPoX clients, by using up to 9 modifiers (?1 to ?9) in a base user login or password name. The single modifier provided in the last release is still supported (# is now equivalent to ?1). You can also set the Count value for each modifier, for example, to simulate multiple user names in the same domain. This enhancement is provided for:
    • GPF-based PPPoE, PPPoA, and PPPoEoA clients—in both the GUI and API.
    • non-GPF PPPoE, PPPoA, and PPPoEoA clients—in the API only.
  • Server PADO packets
    In previous releases, N2X PPPoE servers sent PADO packets without encoding an AC-Name field. With this release, you can configure the AC-Name to encode. As per RFC 2516 section 5.2, the AC-Name uniquely identifies the Access Concentrator unit from all others. You can configure it through the PPPoE Server Properties dialog box or AgtPppSessionPoolEthernet.
  • PPPoE client lookup—Previously, PPPoE servers used the HostUniq value to identify its different PPPoE clients. PCs running Microsoft PPPoE clients however can change their HostUniq values between PADI and PADR packets (for example, changing user1@AGILENT.COM to AGILENT.COM\user1), resulting in unrecognized PADR packets. PPPoE servers now use the MAC/VLAN address to identify its clients.
  • PPPoX packet lengths—The legacy PPPoE, PPPoA, and PPPoEoA protocol emulations can now send and receive PPPoX packets up to 1750 octets in length. The legacy PPPoL2TP emulations still have a limit of 1500 bytes.
• BGP-4 enumerated names
  A couple of recently added AgtTestTopology methods (IsRoutingEngineRequired, ListEmulationCustomStates) used enumerated names that were not consistent with more common names used by existing scripts. For backwards compatibility, the methods shown below now use the more common enumerated names.

• RSVP meshes
  Information has been added about RSVP traffic mesh pre-requisites.
• VPLS sites
  Note added to To test how many VPLS sites your system supports describing how to test H-VPLS.
• OSPF MTU size
  Note added to Ethernet Configuration dialog box's General tab to highlight the maximum MTU size available for OSPF.
• Jitter histograms
  New Help topic describes which test card models support real-time jitter histograms.
• VLAN ID increment
  In Release 6.9, adding multiple VLAN address pools through the Add LAN/VLAN IPv4 Address Pools dialog box used a default VLAN ID Increment value of 0. In this release, the default has been changed back to 1 to reflect the behavior in past releases.
• MAC address table
  When you clear the GPF-based MAC table through the Port Properties dialog box: MAC Table tab, the MAC table used by the legacy Link dialog box is also cleared. Previously, the legacy Link dialog box displayed MAC entries even though they had been cleared and were no longer valid.

We are pleased to announce the availability of Release 6.01 of the Agilent N2X Conformance Test Software (CTS) for the Packets & Protocols Application. The N2X protocol conformance solution is a part of the N2X Productivity Advantage designed to reduce complexity and increase productivity by providing validated test methodologies for conformance verification.

The N2X protocol conformance solution incorporates a unique Test Manager with industry leading usability and reporting features. This allows for rapid result diagnosis and problem isolation saving engineering time and effort involved in developing and validating protocol implementations. The Test manager also has the flexibility to be easily integrated with your regression strategy

• IPTV Quality of Experience Productivity Application for IPv6 (N5574A)

This application is the first IPv6-based solution that provides the industry’s most scalable and realistic IPTV subscriber emulation and measures IPTV channel-zapping times on a persubscriber and per-channel basis.

Each N2X test port can emulate thousands of IPTVv6 subscribers with simulated dynamic behaviors. Use the N2X IPTVv6 QoE Test Solution to:

• validate IPTV infrastructure scalability limits by emulating and measuring thousands of subscribers per port
• measure channel zapping times using MLDv1/v2
• test various devices such as PON OLTs, IP DSLAMs, and edge router

• Technical Data Sheets

  • New:
    • Integrated L2-7 Solution (N5575A and N5576A)
    • Spanning Tree Protocol (STP, RSTP & MSTP) Emulation Software (N5580A)
    • BFD Protocol Emulation (N5583A)
    • IGMP Emulation Software (E7828A)

  The Journal

  • New revision of the Journal of Internet Test Methodologies
    Edition 3.0 of The Journal of Internet Test Methodologies includes new test cases for testing IPTV, EPON, Network Security and Real World Application Testing. It also contains many revised and updated test cases for MPLS, Virtual Private Networks, VoIP, and Access Protocols.

  Case Study

  • How network conditions impact IPTV QoE

  Press Releases

  • Agilent Technologies Introduces Industry-Leading L2-7 Integration with Hardware-Based TCP on N2X Multiservices Test Solution (June 18, 2007)
  • Agilent Technologies Introduces World's First BFD Test Solution, Ensuring IP/MPLS Network Robustness (June 5, 2007)
  • Agilent Technologies and Net-O2 Announce World's First CFM Test Suite that Enhances Carrier Ethernet Reliability (May 23, 2007)
  • Agilent Technologies' N2X Multiservices Test Solution Used to Validate Alcatel-Lucent Triple Play Service Delivery Architecture (May 9, 2007)