Network Emulation with LANforge-ICE

LANforge ICE is a network impairment emulator. It can add impairments in a controlled and reproducible manner to aid in testing applications and network equipment that must operate over a network. LANforge supports many impairments: latency, bandwidth, jitter, packet loss, packet reordering and more. Emulation speeds range from 10bps to 5Gbps, and some LANforge systems support more than 48 concurrent emulations. It can act as a layer-2 pass-through device for easy insertion into the system under test. It also supports 802.1Q VLANs, router emulation, bridges and other network elements for more advanced emulation needs.

The more advanced emulation configurations are managed using the LANforge Netsmith feature. Netsmith is a click-and-drag virtual network builder. It supports Bridges (switches) including spanning tree protocol, as well as OSPF, BGP, RIP, and multicast routers. IPv4 and IPv6 routing protocols are supported, and the bridge will handle any Ethernet frame. LANforge is running real router and bridge software, so it can exchange messages with external equipment to populate routes and set up spanning trees. A screenshot from a Netsmith virtual router & emulation setup is found here. This setup is simulating a network or 48 cable modems and DSL modems with routers doing NAT, DHCP, and some bridges. This customer uses LANforge for online game testing.

Read more about the LANforge-ICE product.