Agilent Technologies Announces Industry's First OC-48c/STM-16c Testing Solution for Gigabit/Terabit Routers - Product Announcement

Edge: Work-Group Computing Report, Dec 27, 1999

Agilent Technologies, Inc., a subsidiary of Hewlett-Packard Company, Monday introduced the industry's first OC-48c/STM-16c test interface for gigabit/terabit routers. The dual-port RouterTester P48/2 Test Module is the newest addition to Agilent's family of solutions for testing carrier-class IP (Internet Protocol) routers.

RouterTester, which incorporates multiple Packet over SONET/SDH (POS) interfaces and integrated support for the BGP-4 routing protocol, is the industry's only test system capable of performing true Internet-scale simulation, required for development and performance testing of high-speed routers.

The Agilent RouterTester P48/2 Test Module includes two independent test ports, each capable of simultaneously transmitting and receiving up to 6.1 million IP packets per second. A complete RouterTester system can support 32 synchronized test modules with 64 OC-48c/STM-16c POS test ports.

RouterTester is the only IP test system generates multiple streams of IP packets that simulate realistic traffic from many different-sized networks and creates real-world Internet traffic conditions for testing.

The system's BGP-4 routing protocol implementation allows users to establish large, complex routing tables rapidly in systems under test. This enables the product to simulate traffic delivered to many thousands of networks of varying sizes, creating traffic with realistic distributions of IP source and destination addresses to stress router performance. Traffic that is characteristic of data, voice or video streams can be generated automatically between all combinations of these networks.

The new RouterTester provides real time, wire-speed performance analysis for all generated traffic streams. Multiple streams with many different service classes or differentiated services (diffserv) codepoints can be generated and analyzed in real time to provide detailed QoS metrics, including packet throughput, packet latency and lost or misdirected packets. Router address lookup, queuing and prioritization schemes can also be tested under real-world conditions. Simple, partial and full-mesh traffic patterns can be configured to fully stress the router switching fabric under test.

In addition to RouterTester, Agilent's router testing solutions include a Agilent QA Robot system. QA Robot is a complementary IP test product that offers routing protocol conformance, validation and stress testing. Together, RouterTester and QA Robot provide a complete solution for testing both elements of a router's operational performance -- packet forwarding and route processing. U.S. Pricing and Availability

The Agilent RouterTester P48/2 Test Module is priced at $49,875 per port and will be available for shipment in the first quarter of 2000.

Additional information about RouterTester can be found on the Web at www.agilent.com/comms/RouterTester. About Agilent Technologies

Agilent Technologies, Inc. is a diversified technology company, resulting from Hewlett-Packard Company's plan to strategically realign itself into two fully independent companies. With 42,000 employees serving customers in more than 120 countries, Agilent Technologies, as a subsidiary of HP, is a global leader in designing and manufacturing test, measurement and monitoring instruments, systems and solutions, and semiconductor and optical components. The company serves markets that include communications, electronics, life sciences and healthcare. The businesses comprising Agilent had net revenues of more than $8.3 billion in fiscal year 1999.

Information about Agilent Technologies can be found on the Web at www.agilent.com.