Ixia's purchase of VeriWave has opened up a new testing opportunity for its customers – Wi-Fi. As increasing customer access demands and quality of experience (QoE) expectations create the need for seamless mobility equipment manufacturers, enterprises, and carriers are looking for end-to-end solutions that completely test converged Wi-Fi, wired, and 3G/4G ecosystems. Wireless operators are realizing that additional 4G bandwidth will not keep pace with the increasing requirements of the emerging media-rich devices and social media applications. Hence, Wi-Fi is a key offload technology to siphon traffic from the overloaded 3G and 4G networks. The synthesis of Wi-Fi and LTE will be an essential combination to deliver the necessary bandwidth required by the industry for emerging video-heavy, media-savvy applications.

The combination of Ixia and VeriWave technologies provides the tools needed to test from the wireless edge to the Internet core. VeriWave supports world class Wi-Fi and WLAN testing, while Ixia's leading solutions for 3G and 4G/LTE networks, wired networks, and data centers provide strong complementary testing options.

Ixia is pleased to povide its customers access to the following new IxVeriWave Wi-Fi testing material and information:

Links
Introduction from Atul
IxVeriWave Portal
IxVeriWave Wi-Fi Testing Solution
IxVeriWave Wi-Fi Testing Products

White Papers
IxVeriWave Express Evaluation Test Plan
Cellular Offload: Site Deployment Best Practices Guide
WLAN Site Assessment - Best Practices for Preand Post-Deployment Verification

Case Study
Ensuring Life-Critical Communications at Madera Community Hospital

Data Sheets
Twenty data sheets (test suites, test tools, interface cards, chassis & chambers)
 

Ixia and VeriWave Customers:

We want to share the exciting news that Ixia has completed its acquisition of VeriWave, a move that continues Ixia's quest to provide our global customers with a total end-to-end converged testing solution. This strategic move fortifies and extends Ixia's wireless leadership - testing aspects of 3G/4G and WLAN networks such as smart wireless devices, wireless access infrastructure, the wireless core network, the IP core network, and the converged data center. With this addition Ixia becomes a unique company in the world by possessing four strong pillars of technology leadership - IP, Ethernet, LTE, and Wi-Fi - to provide end-to-end wireless testing capabilities. 

The use of Wi-Fi is growing exponentially with the proliferation of new wireless devices such as smart phones and tablets. The increase of media-rich content, like video-based applications, is placing more strain on enterprise networks and demands new quality expectations. 

LTE and Wi-Fi will form a potent technological combination for many years to come. Wireless operators are realizing that additional 4G bandwidth will not keep pace with the increasing requirements of the emerging media-rich devices and social media applications. Hence, Wi-Fi is a key offload technology to siphon traffic from the overloaded 3G and 4G networks. The synthesis of Wi-Fi and LTE will be an essential combination to deliver the necessary bandwidth required by the industry for emerging video-heavy, media-savvy applications. 

The combination of Ixia and VeriWave technologies provides the tools needed to test from the wireless edge to the Internet core. VeriWave supports world class Wi-Fi and WLAN testing, while Ixia's leading solutions for 3G and 4G/LTE networks, wired networks, and data centers provide strong complementary testing options. 

For the immediate future, continue to work with VeriWave in the manner you are accustomed. From the VeriWave web site you can still reach product information, customer support, and sales. We will update you as we progress with further integration. 

We look forward to continually providing you with the most innovative and forward-thinking technology solutions. If you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to contact your sales representative. 

All the best, 

Atul Bhatnagar

President and CEO, Ixia

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.

EANTC and Light Reading turned to Ixia to provide a testing solution that could validate various vendors’ 100GE products. These tests are aimed at producing comparative results that demonstrate:

• BASELINE TESTS
  • RFC 2544 throughput and latency test across the backplane (100GE to 100GE)
  • RFC 2544 throughput and latency fan-out (10x 10GE to 100GE)
  • Similar IP multicast traffic scenarios
• SERVICES
  • RSVP-TE scalability — Router’s ability to act as an MPLS Label Switched Router (LSR)
  • Layer 3 VPNs scalability — Scaling up the VPNs
  • Virtual Private LAN Services (VPLS) scalability — Validating forwarding performance for Layer 2 multi-point services
  • Quality of Service — Testing MPLS-based prioritization under congestion
• ENERGY EFFICIENCY
  • Measurement of the energy consumption in accordance with standards.

In addition, two individual test cases can be included for competitive differentiation (whenever feasible).

This EANTC-led, industry-first set of benchmark tests provides carriers, data center managers, and application service providers with a detailed insight into various Higher Speed Ethernet (HSE) products using a consistent test methodology via Ixia’s 100GE testing solution. The first in this series of tests took place during May and June, 2011.

The first two sets of results, from ZTE and Alcatel Lucent, are available at Light Reading’s site:

• For more information the ZTE’s test results, go to http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=209122.
• For more information on Alcatel-Lucent’s test results, go to http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=209687.

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. So can we take the relative silence that ensued after the test, as a town crier’s “all is well” call?

Almost 1 million smartphones shipped in Q1 of 2011… each of these devices require a unique address. The IANA ran out of allocatable IPv4 address blocks on Feb 1. The regional registries are projected to run out of IPv4 by the end of year… Only 50 percent of service providers have enabled IPv6 right now. If all is well, why did Microsoft recently purchase 666,624 IPv4 addresses from Nortel’s liquidation sale for $7.5 million? That’s $11.25USD for each IPv4 address that the IANA was giving away for free until they ran out!

The stakes are high for getting the transition to IPv6 right, and the necessity is fast-approaching. Despite headlines such as “Successful World IPv6 Day Demonstrates Global Readiness for IPv6”, we need to be cautious to prevent misinterpreting the results of World IPv6 day, as the data was not complete.

1. Ill-prepared providers not represented. There are a large number of access providers, websites, and ISPs who did not participate in the event because they are not yet equipped to support IPv6. Some backbone providers still need to establish IPv6 peering with each other. We cannot draw any conclusion that ‘all is well’ for those that did not participate.
2. Scale of use was limited. Because the number of users accessing IPv6 content is currently limited, the test didn’t push any scalability or processing demands. Data from a recent Arbor Networks study suggests that IPv6 currently makes up only between 0.1 and 0.2 percent of Internet traffic. In addition, many access networks have not prepared or tested at scale. This is still a big concern as more and more IPv6 endpoints connect to networks and as more users try to access IPv6 content and applications.
3. Testing time too narrow. World IPv6 day was just a 24-hour test, when a small fraction of websites, most using the dual-stack protocol to enable IPv4/IPv6 coexistence, discovered their readiness for IPv6 connectivity and content. A 24-hour test period is not sufficient to flush-out problems that will occur with a long-term turn-up.
4. Lack of detailed data. Information on the results of World IPv6 day are lacking regarding the collection of results and metrics. The only statement on the website of the promoters of the event, the Internet Society (ISOC), is: “The vast majority of users were able to access services as usual, but in rare cases, users experienced impaired access to participating websites during the trial.” What were the problems users experienced? Was there any way to identify the cause of the problems, such as a point of failure or responsible party? How were problems resolved? We were unable to locate a central repository of findings. A few participants wrote briefs about their World IPv6 day experience, but most details are lacking.

Although we really cannot draw any general conclusions as to ‘world readiness’ for IPv6 based on the event, there is value in that the World IPv6 day drew attention to the need for IPv6 readiness. Web and service providers were given a reality check as to their readiness or lack of readiness to even participate in the event. The next steps are critical for both network equipment manufacturers (NEMs) and service providers.

Test equipment is playing a critical role in accelerating the deployment of IPv6 on broadband access equipment and networks. Ixia is working with NEMs worldwide to ensure their broadband access devices can satisfy IPv6 conformance, interoperability and performance requirements, along with IPv4 co-existence.

For service providers, Ixia models clients, services, and other network equipment in a controlled lab environment so they can emulate different IPv6 deployment scenarios and test them under both realistic and ‘extreme scale’ conditions. They can easily manipulate/modify the test configuration to model different network conditions and future expectations – such as the ratio of IPv4 to IPv6 clients and traffic, and understand how this will impact network performance and end user experience.

With Ixia’s test platform, service providers can achieve repeatable, reliable measurements that enable them to understand scalability and performance thresholds for network configuration purposes, and to ensure they can meet SLAs. By replacing real devices with a few Ixia test ports that effectively emulate an entire network, service providers gain confidence in their IPv6 implementations and can deploy them faster.

Please visit Ixia’s Black Book index to get an IPv6 Transition Technologies Black Book. It includes IPv6 test methodologies (for DSLite, 6rd, Dual Stack PPP, and DHCPv6/PD) that will help Ixia users become familiar with these technologies and understand the key testing challenges associated with them.

In addition to our low-cost starter bundles, Ixia recently announced two new limited-time special promotions.

1. Free XM12 Chassis
   Purchase any 3 XM-series load module by September 30th and receive Ixia's high-performance XM12 at no additional cost.
2. Get an XM12 for the Price of an XM2
   Until September 30th, Ixia is offering the option for you to buy an XM12 (12-slot) chassis for the price of an XM2 (2-slot) chassis when you purchase any XM-series load module.

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?

Last year, the Lippis Report took this burden in hand and, with the use of Ixia’s iSimCity testing facility, began testing top-of-the-line 10GE data center devices to measure performance and power consumption. Two rounds of testing are now complete and published in the Lippis Report’s “Open Industry Network Performance & Power Test for Cloud Networks Evaluating 10/40 GbE Switches”.

Round three testing is scheduled for October, 2011. Network equipment providers have until August 1, 2011 to register their 10/40GE switches for this testing event. All equipment providers are encouraged to participate in this independent evaluation event to give users the data they need to make more informed purchasing decisions.

Round 1 (Dec 2010) included the following products:

ToR switches evaluated:

• Arista 7124SX 10G SFP Data Center Switch
• Arista 7050S-64 10/40G Data Center Switch
• BLADE Network Technologies, an IBM Company
• IBM BNT RackSwitch G8124
• BLADE Network Technologies, an IBM Company
• IBM BNT RackSwitch G8264
• Brocade VDXTM 6720-24 Data Center Switch
• Force10 S-Series S4810
• Hitachi Cable, Apresia15000-64XL-PSR
• Voltaire® VantageTM 6048

Core switches evaluated:

• Alcatel-Lucent OmniSwitch 10K
• Arista 7504 Series Data Center Switch
• Juniper Network EX Series EX8200 Ethernet Switch

Round 2 testing (April 2011) included the following products:

• Arista 7124SX 10G SFP Data Center Switch
• Arista 7050S-64 10/40G Data Center Switch
• Brocade VDXTM 6720-24 Data Center Switch

Prospectus for round 3 test event (October 2011):

• The test is open to all suppliers of 10 & 40 Gigabit Ethernet switching equipment, both modular and fixed configurations. All suppliers must register by August 1, 2011 to enter the test.
• The test will take place in the modern Ixia test lab named iSimCity, located in Santa Clara, CA. Ixia will supply all test equipment needed to conduct the performance tests.

With the ratification of the 40/100 Gigabit Ethernet (GE) standard, IEEE 802.3ba™, by the IEEE on June 17 of this year, these higher speed Ethernet technologies are ready for standardized deployments. Ixia, the Ethernet Alliance, and the networking industry worked together to develop and ratify the specification in record time.

The standard addressed two speeds at the same time – 40 and 100 Gbps – to address differing needs in the data center versus the Internet. Network speeds requirements in the data center directly correlate to computing power, which doubles every two years. Network speed requirements in the Internet are related to general traffic growth that is doubling every 18 months. The upshot is that in the 2010-2015 time frame, 40 Gbps is needed in the data center and 100 Gbps is needed in the Internet core.

Ixia has continually led the test and measurement market starting with a 2008 proof of concept demonstration at NxtComm and continuing with demonstrations through the release of its K2 40/100 Gbps CFP MSA-based solutions in 2009 and its 40 Gbps QSFP-based solution in 2010.

From my perspective, I see initial products coming to market in 2010 from component and cable vendors, system vendors and carriers. 2011 and 2012 will see proven products and deployments. We at Ixia are dedicated to providing continued support to the HSE market.

One last note. The Ethernet Alliance will host an HSE interoperability event during the week of September 13 in Santa Clara, CA. The event will be closed door, with results distributed to the participants only. We expect that the interop participants will also be involved in the Ethernet Alliance's demonstration at SC10 in New Orleans in Novermber. Anyone interested in participating should contact me as soon as possible: mailto:daves@ixiacom.com.