IxNetwork Software Defined Network (SDN) Test Solution

Problem: SDN Revolutionizing How Networking is Done

SDN has emerged as a new networking paradigm that transforms the existing closed network into open and programmable components of a highly scalable cloud infrastructure. It redefines how networks are built to better support business agility. This paradigm shift requires extensive testing and validation to ensure that it can deliver the benefits promised by SDN. With multiple emerging and competing technologies addressing different deployment scenarios, it is critical for equipment makers, service providers, and enterprises to have the ability to quickly and thoroughly qualify products and services before deployment.

Solution: A Comprehensive Test Solution for Dynamic and Diverse SDN Networks

The IxNetwork SDN test solution delivers feature sets covering various SDN technology approaches, including green-field OpenFlow deployment, carrier network SDN technology, data center virtualization overlay, as well as overall orchestration and management. The IxNetwork SDN solution emulates carrierscale, multi-service, complex SDN networks to stress device under test (DUT) or the end-to-end networks under dynamic conditions with flexibility and advanced operation to test every aspect of user scenarios.

Highlights

• Qualify SDN deployment scenarios and use cases with realistic networks and device emulation

• Ensure smooth deployment by testing with carrier class network emulation, dynamic service modeling at internet scale, and rapid isolation of service violations

• Accelerate time to market delivery and minimize financial risks of network migration with effective tool to validate cutting edge technology

• Ensure network design meets business demand by stressing hyper scale data center networks with peak load

• Automate end to end with REST and other APIs for continuous validation before rolling out new product and services

Key Features

• OpenFlow controller and switch emulation supports OpenFlow version 1.0 and 1.3.1 for conformance, functional, scale and performance testing

• Segment Routing (SR) extension for OSPF, ISIS and BGP emulates realistic network topology to stress DUT SR implementation and validate data plane forwarding based on the instructions in the packet itself

• Segment Routing IPv6 (SRv6) emulation validates SRv6 underlay, global IPv4/IPv6 services and L3VPN/EVPN application overlay for network programmability

• SRv6 OAM emulation validates ping, traceroute, S-BFD and BFD functionalities over SRv6/G-SRv6 data-plane

• PCEP and BGP-LS emulation validates Traffic Engineering Database (TED) distribution and existing Link State Database (LSDB) synchronization, programmability of optimized traffic engineering path based on network resource and constrains, as well as data forwarding performance along the TE path.

• BGP SR TE Policy emulation validates SR TE policy advertisement and capability to direct traffic into explicit unequal cost multi-path (UCMP)

• Flexible Algorithm (Flex-Algo) emulation for ISIS and OSPFv2 validates IGP constraint-based path computation for SR MPLS path. Flex-Algo emulation for ISIS also validates constraint-based path computation for SRv6 path

• VXLAN and GENEVE emulation stress-tests the ability of physical or virtual VTEP handling large number of remote VTEPs and VMs, as well as supporting VM mobility within or across data center

• EVPN with MPLS or VXLAN data plane emulates large number of PE or VTEPs to qualify virtualization overlay, L2/L3 services, advanced multi-homing capability of Data Center devices and Data Center Network

• OVSDB client and server emulation supports HW_VTEP schema to validate overlay network provision in Software Defined Data Center

• NETCONF client and server emulation executes command sets agnostic to Yang model to test NETCONF/YANG execution, as well as stress router/switch management plane and controller NETCONF session scale

• BIER emulation validates control plane operation of ISIS/OSPF underlay and MVPN service overlay operation, multicast traffic forwarding and replication, as well as scale/performance of BIER network

• In-Band Telemetry packet templates help to generate traffic mix to validate INT data insertion and measure the forwarding performance with telemetry load

• eCPRI message generation validates 5G fronthaul transport network with eCPRI messages along with other data traffic to ensure QoS and ultra-low latency

• gRIBI client emulation validates RIB entry injection in target routing devices over gRPC channels

• TWAMP Light Sender and Receiver emulation to validate measurement of both one-way and twoway performance metrics like delay, delay variation, and packet loss