Spirent Releases Rash of New Networking Tools

Spirent Communications earlier this week unleashed a flood of new and enhanced testing tools designed to work in concert to test protocols and networking equipment implemented at the edge of the network.

The Rockville, Md., wholly owned unit of Spirent plc introduced 10 new or enhanced testing tools for three of its performance analysis platforms that are intended to speed the development and deployment of next-generation networks.

"We created a series of new products we're launching together because they have to be tested together. With new voice-over-IP protocols being implemented, new migrations from IP (Version) 4 to IP V 6, and higher scalability of (Spirent testing tools) at the edge of the network, we need to test these together as systems because they have to work together as a system," said Mark Fishburn, vice president of technical strategy at Spirent Communications, in Calabasas, Calif.

Across its range of testing tools, Spirent added more automation, set-up wizards and scripting tools to streamline performance testing. The unit, best known for its SmartBits communications equipment testing chassis, announced a new release of its Avalanche software for the chassis that adds the ability to test for distributed denial-of-service (DoS) attacks inline with multi-protocol traffic. Version 5.2 of the software also improves streaming media performance, supports 10 Gigabit Ethernet, and adds VLAN Tagging and IP Fragmentation support.

Among its IP telephony enhancements, Spirent released version 2.0 of its Abacus 5000 test system to allow service provider labs to verify performance, functions and voice quality for carrier-grade soft switches and media gateways. It also enhanced the ability of its high-end Abacus2 voice and video test system to text fax-over-IP applications.

A new version of its Router Performance Tester simplifies the evaluation of Layer 2 and Layer 3 Multi-Protocol Lable Switching VPN implementations. It also adds a Web software update utility, an enhanced test scheduler for batch testing and an online Web portal that features sample configuration files.

Also among its new software products is the Spirent SmartBits Automation tool that allows test engineers to develop tests over multiple protocols, including ATM, IP Multicast, MPLS and IP V 6. It includes a Script Automation Interface, which allows non-programmers to automate testing. Version 7.70 of the Spirent SmartWindow software for SmartBits Test System provides a testing environment for SmartBits Ethernet, Fibre Channel, Packet over SONET, Frame Relay and ATM network interfaces at up to 10 Gigabits per second line rates. Release 3.0 of the SmartBits SmartFlow analyzer for policy-based network devices allows the simulation of complex network traffic patterns for IP V 4, IP V 6, VLAN and Multicast traffic.