Carrier Etherent is set to dominate a new era of telecommunications through the transparent delivery of Ethernet based services from the core through to enterprise. The N2X Carrier Ethernet test solution offers service providers and equipment manufacturers a powerful toolset to verify the interoperability, scalability and resiliency of emerging Carrier Ethernet services under real world conditions.The networking industry is making considerable efforts to ensure that Ethernet infrastructure and services are 'Carrier Class':
- The Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) has defined a certification process to accelerate Carrier Ethernet deployment.
- Key service delivery concerns such as quality of service (QoS), resiliency and scalability are being addressed.
- The IEEE and IETF have created recommendations such as Multiple Spanning Tree Protocol (MSTP), Bidirectional Forwarding Detection (BFD), Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) and Connectivity Fault Management (CFM) to ensure Ethernet manageability, robustness and interoperability.
As this evolves, testing is recognised as an essential component to ensuring carrier-class Ethernet services are efficiently and reliably delivered to subscribers.
Agilent N2X offers a comprehensive test solution to meet Carrier Ethernet test needs offering:
- Proven MEF 9 and MEF 14 functional conformance test suites to verify adherence to the Metro Ethernet Forum’s UNI specifications.
- Emulation of real-world network conditions including highly scalable support for STP, RSTP, MSTP, BFD, MPLS, VPLS, VPWS, LACP, and VLAN tag stacking.
- Powerful traffic generation and QoS measure capable of simulating up to 32,000 Ethernet Virtual Circuits (EVCs).
- QoS measurements across 32,000 streams to accurately verify MEF-defined traffic management parameters such as CIR and EIR.
- Protocol conformance test suites for layer-2 technologies including STP, RSTP, MSTP, LACP and Virtual LANs (VLANs).
Interoperability & Conformance
Carrier Ethernet services will be delivered within a multi-vendor network environment. As a founding member of the Metro Ethernet Forum, Agilent was first to market with a complete MEF 9 and MEF 14 conformance test suite. The easy-to-use, test-plan-oriented N2X solution accurately follows the MEF specification and will ensure UNI interoperability of tested devices, accelerating the deployment of Carrier Ethernet services.
Resiliency
Carrier Ethernet is driving the addition of carrier class reliability mechanisms to deliver emerging services. Validating network reliability requires the simulation of a realistic network environment while accurately measuring QoS parameters and service disruption. The powerful and flexible traffic generation and multi-protocol emulation capabilities of N2X deliver unparalleled test realism and measurement accuracy. Features including the VPLS topology builder and per-stream QoS measurements allow service providers and equipment manufactures to quantify the robustness of deployed Ethernet services.
Scalability
The scalability and performance of the underlying network infrastructure is critical to the profitable delivery of Carrier Ethernet services. The N2X Packets and Protocols test solution simplifies scalability testing by enabling users to easily set up sophisticated test scenarios in a couple of minutes. Powered by the industry’s most scalable multi-protocol emulation hardware, N2X can validate the ability of devices to deliver many thousands of E-LAN and E-Line services.
With industry leading protocol emulation and hardware, the N2X Carrier Ethernet test solution offers the industry’s most comprehensive solution for verifying the interoperability, resiliency and scalability of next generation Carrier Ethernet infrastructure and services.
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