Ixia’s iSimCity laboratory in Santa Clara, CA was host to the Lippis Report’s test of the Supervisor Engine 2T (Sup2T), Cisco’s latest upgrade to its Catalyst 6500 switch. The Catalyst 6500 is not only Cisco’s most successful product with more than 700,000 systems sold, but the industry’s most widely-deployed enterprise Ethernet campus/data center switch. Read more »

2012 promises to be a huge year for 10 and 40GbE data center switching equipment. Once again, Ixia has teamed with the Lippis Report for the 4th round of open industry data center switch performance benchmark testing. The spring 2012 event will evaluate the forwarding performance and power consumption of 10/40Gbps switching fabrics in the context of high-scale data center clouds. 
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Carriers are replacing legacy TDM-based mobile backhaul networks with IP/Ethernet-based solutions to cost-effectively scale their networks and accommodate bandwidth-hungry mobile devices. However, carriers must overcome timing challenges because native IP/Ethernet technology does not address the packet synchronization of the TDM networks they aim to replace.
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With all sights set on expanding bandwidth and speed, 10/40 gigabit Ethernet promises to capture a lot of attention this year. 40GE switches are the new muscle cars that are beginning to power leading-edge enterprise networks. Virtualization and network convergence is driving huge volumes of traffic across data center switching fabrics. The capacity and forwarding performance of this fabric is critical to ensuring timely delivery of service and application traffic, and the associated end-user experience. Read more »

Now that the IEEE 802.3ba is a ratified 40/100GE standard and commercial hardware products are available, service providers and enterprises are beginning to deploy higher speed Ethernet (HSE) networks to capture the promise of extreme scalability, performance, and cost-effectiveness.

We’ve seen many of our network equipment manufacturer (NEM), service provider, and enterprise accounts turn to Ixia’s HSE test solution over competitive products. Today’s success of our HSE solutions is a culmination of many years of research, planning, development, and thought leadership. Over the past four years, Ixia has played a major role in the definition and deployment of HSE. Read more »

Following is a list of new features and functions that will be available this month for Ixia’s IxN2X software and hardware products.
New hardware features include: Read more »

A year ago this month at Ixia’s iSimCity testing facility, the Lippis Report launched round one of its public tests of top-of-the-line 10/40GE data center devices to measure performance and power consumption. The third round of testing is now complete and comprises the first-ever evaluation of 40GE switches. The data center cloud 10/40GE fabric test was free for vendors to participate and open to all industry suppliers of 10/40Gbps switching equipment. Ixia’s synopsis describes the test equipment used and the test coverage, along with the top 10 findings from the testing. Read more »

MPLS has come a long way since its original goal to allow core routers to switch packets faster using a simplified header. MPLS is now a foundation of IP-based networks, providing value-added services such as traffic engineering and VPN services. The success and familiarity of MPLS in the core is driving service providers to deploy MPLS beyond the core network and into access, aggregation, and backhaul networks to support broadband, business, and mobility services. With active development in standards bodies, MPLS is also emerging as an industry standard to enable connection-oriented packet transport with MPLS-TP. Read more »

As Ethernet and IP continue to win the battle for transport and networking technology there are challenges in migrating legacy services and building new converged services leveraging these lower cost-per-bit networks. One of the significant gaps is that native Ethernet does not have an embedded timing distribution capability, which is required for certain applications. Examples of the need for precision timing include: Read more »

Carrier Ethernet technology provides carriers with end-to-end Ethernet services over wide area networks (WANs), and implements both cost and simplicity benefits. However, Ethernet doesn’t have the same carrier-grade functionality of the TDM networks they aim to replace, resulting in challenges associated with quality of service (QoS) guarantees, rapid failover implementation, service management, and scalability. New standards and objectives address these issues, allowing carriers to effectively and reliably deploy Ethernet-based carrier networks. Read more »

Test equipment is playing a critical part in the functional, interoperability, and performance validation of MPLS-TP. Ixia has been working with network equipment manufacturers (NEMs), service providers, and test labs to validate MPLS-TP features and functionality, troubleshoot and resolve implementation issues, and satisfy the milestones that will precede deployment. Read more »

In wireless networks, a driving force called “mobile backhaul” resides in the area between base stations and regional network controllers. As mobile users multiplied and thought up more ways to use their mobile services – demand exploded into multiplay voice, video, and data. At the same time, the ultra-competitive “capture subscribers at any cost” environment drove service providers to offer low-cost, all-you-can-eat service plans, which fueled even more demand. Although it has been slow in culminating, this was the death-blow for Time-division multiplexing (TDM) and a new beginning for Carrier Ethernet. Read more »

Leading the way
Ixia is the leading, global provider of converged IP network test solutions and customer confidence in our products is bolstered because of this market position. But Ixia’s leadership is not just reflected in its position in the market. It invests heavily in innovating leading-edge technologies and is first to market with key advances in testing, including the world’s first test systems for both 40 gigabit Ethernet and for 100 gigabit Ethernet. The company also has a burgeoning trophy case of industry awards, including: Read more »

MPLS-TP is a new technology undergoing continued development. It is designed as a low-cost Level 2 technology that supports connection-oriented packet transport services with a similar degree of predictability, reliability, and OAM (operations, administration and maintenance) found in existing TDM transport networks. Service providers that need to streamline operations and simplify converged networks are driving the development of MPLS-TP standards and solutions. MPLS-TP has garnered tremendous interest from the service provider community and will be a key area of product development for network equipment manufacturers (NEMs) over the next several years. Read more »

IxNetwork version 6.00 showcases a redesigned user interface that drives end user productivity. The new UI makes it easier for first-time users to learn the application, and appeases existing users with key usability and productivity improvements. Key features of this May, 2011 release include: Read more »

Fixed and mobile packet networks worldwide experience sharply increasing traffic, driven by video applications, mobile data, and business services. Carriers, application service providers, and content distributors have been waiting for faster interfaces to become available. As the networking industry is about to enter the world of 100 Gigabit Ethernet (GE), EANTC and Light Reading are setting up a public test program aimed to provide operators with an unbiased, empirical view of the 100GE systems coming to the market. In the open test program, EANTC is going to validate the performance, service scalability and power efficiency of the new router interfaces. Read more »

We wrote last month of the impending World IPv6 Day on June 8th, which came and went without much fanfare. More than 400 websites and Internet service providers (ISPs) around the world, including Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Akamai, and Limelight Networks, participated in the 24-hour event that provided a coordinated “test flight” of their IPv6-enabled services. Some reports of the event state that there were a few glitches, but no major catastrophes. Read more »

For some companies, like financial institutions that rely on stock ticker feeds, a slight difference in network latency could mean a difference of millions of dollars. Enterprises and government agencies also rely on ultra-low latency networks (ULLN) and devices to power their time-sensitive applications; and communications providers employ them to enable differentiated, premium services. To remain competitive, today’s network equipment providers (NEMs) labor to eliminate sub-micro-seconds of forwarding latency in their routers, switches, and optical equipment.
Ultra-low latency (ULL) has become one of the hottest trends in information technology and ULL testing has come to the forefront. Read more »

Companies tout their products’ features and functions, but how do you know if they really work as promised? When shopping for higher-priced consumer products, a new washing machine for example, many of us rely on 3rd-party information. Customer reviews, user ratings, and lab-tested reviews from Consumer Reports help us to quickly sift through the marketing fluff and find the right product for our particular need. But where do you turn for comparative and lab-tested data when you’re shopping for a 10 or 40 Gigabit Ethernet (GE) switch? Read more »

As organized by the Internet Society (ISOC), June 8th is “World IPv6 day”, the global-scale test flight of IPv6. Many major organizations (like Google, Facebook, Yahoo!, Akamai,and Limelight Networks) will enable IPv6 on their main websites for a 24 hour period. This will provide a clear idea of web and home device readiness for IPv6. Read more »