Light Reading publishes EANTC's Megatest of Cisco’s IP Video Infrastructure
Light Reading, a TechWeb online magazine commissioned EANTC to independently test Cisco's video infrastructure called medianets. We challenged Cisco by asking: How much of the medianets vision is already available for an independent test today?
Cisco was ready for our test of all aspects of the medianets infrastructure. It was an extraordinary effort: fifteen Cisco business units were involved, preparations took six months, and uncounted Cisco systems participated.We tested the service delivery network, the end-user applications and Cisco’s IP video data center components. The results are published in three articles on Light Reading’s website.
Part 1:Cisco's IP video service delivery networkPart 2: Cisco's IP video end-user applicationsPart 3: Cisco’s IP video data center componentsVideo: Interview with Carsten Rossenhövel
Why should you verify your Wide Area Network?
Our WAN tests offer a high return on investment (ROI). Even if investments in testing seem unnecessary, it pays off to invest into professional testing of highest quality with clear results. Read the following lines to learn how this is possible.
Companies use their own Wide Area Network (WAN) to connect branch offices or field staff to the headquarters. WAN links are deployed to transmit voice over IP as well as different types of data with various sizes and priorities. In order not to disrupt business continuity, all applications need to run trouble-free at all locations and be available with a pre-defined performance. Therefore, most companies conclude a contract with their service provider called Service Level Agreement (SLA). It clearly defines the Quality of Service (QoS) concerning latency, jitter, maximum allowed packet loss, bandwidth, throughput and bit error rate.
Our WAN tests document and verify the service provider’s fulfillment of the SLA in order to ensure the company’s strategic business processes and objectives. Particularly real time applications are sensible to delay or packet loss; e.g. the communication may severely be affected at voice or video transmissions in the case of quality degradation. Most Wide Area Networks have a back-up link with less bandwidth to take over data transfer in emergency in order to avoid a complete breakdown. We test this back-up link to see if and how fast the switch-over works.
The benefits of our tests are a confirmation of the service provider’s fulfillment of the SLA and a verification of the configuration’s functionality. If we find errors in the configuration, the customer gets an independent expert’s report detailing the concrete results helping the customer to negotiate the troubleshooting with his service provider.
EANTC is the reliable partner, quickly detecting configuration errors and supporting the problem solving with its excellent know-how. We are recognized in the industry for always clearly proving any errors. Therefore service providers accept our independent expert’s reports and start troubleshooting right away. Thus, the optimized configuration guarantees the continuity of services and avoids any financial losses in case of network failure.
More Information
Why has L7-Testing become indispensable?
If a company plans a new security infrastructure it should also invest into testing – it will save real money at the end. If answering the following questions about the current solution is not possible, L7-Testing by EANTC is needed:
* Will the existent solution fulfill all future requirements, even at peak load?
* Do you know exactly the solution’s capacity limitations?
* Is the configuration ideal to allow trouble free operation at any time?
Today, companies need to regularly invest into their security infrastructure to remain up-to-date with security standards in order to protect their business and data. Testing of the existent solution will find out if it still meets all current requirements in terms of security and scalability – regardless possible near future requirements due to business development. Thus the solution’s real performance limitations will be revealed and allows to plan thoroughly and on time an up-grade or even new design.
If a company plans a new design, it needs to perfectly know what exactly is needed and what the estimated business development will be, in order not to buy an oversized solution at high price not necessarily needed from the promising marketing material of different vendors.
Our Proof-of-Concept-Tests will clarify if the design is sound and meets real as well as possible future requirements in terms of availability and resiliency, scalability and speed, response behavior and performance, robustness and denial of service attacks.
Our Comparative Tests of different solutions will show any differences as well as all advantages or disadvantages and may thus support the purchase decision. This is important because the details in vendors’ data sheets mostly do not reflect the real world. The reason is, that vendors typically test their equipment with a highly optimized configuration to prove the limitations of their devices in a lab environment illustrated in their product literature. From our experience this optimized configuration rarely matches the realistic configurations of any customer, inducing highly differing results concerning the limitations of vendor systems.
Please contact us for further information. We will be happy to help you.
MPLS & Ethernet Interoperability Event 2009
15 participating vendors under EANTC's guidance performed a wide variety of tests conducted over a realistic test network resembling a modern carrier's.
Our testing focused on the latest industry advances. Particularly, developments in areas related to MPLS, such as IPv6 BGP/MPLS IP VPN extensions were tested in addition to Mobile Backhaul solutions such as different types of Circuit Emulation Services (CES), and clock distribution methods such as IEEE 1588 PTPv2, and Synchronous Ethernet.
The results were presented live February 11-13, 2009 at MPLS & Ethernet World Congress in Paris (France).
Carrier Ethernet World APAC 2008 in Singapore
For the first time in the Asia-Pacific region, EANTC and 10 leading vendors are showcasing the results of the latest Carrier Ethernet interoperability test. The multi-vendor network consists of backbone, metro and access network components to facilitate any-to-any interoperability testing.
The live network is showcased November 13-14, 2008 at CEW APAC in Singapore.
Carrier Ethernet Interoperability Event at CEWC 2008 in Berlin, Germany
EANTC and 28 international vendors presented the largest and most advanced public Carrier Ethernet multi-vendor interoperability showcase at Carrier Ethernet World Congress in Berlin, Germany.
The event focused on the Future of Carrier Ethernet Services and constructed a single modern network showing all that a tier-one service provider is likely to encounter.
The results were presented at Carrier Ethernet World Congress September 22-25, 2008 in Berlin (Germany).
EANTC presents its P2P filter testing program at BBWF
Internet piracy is an issue for both, content and service providers. Content providers suffer from lost revenue. Service providers areoverwhelmed by the huge data volumes generated by P2P file sharing andone-click file hosting.
Contributing to this workshop, Carsten Rossenhoevel will present EANTC's Peer-to-Peer filters test, detailing P2P detection protocols, mechanisms, different filter solutions, and test results.
Broadband World Forum, Brussels
10:00 am – 1:00 pm on Monday September 29, 2008
"Pirates of the Net — Challenges and Solutions for Digital ContentDistribution" (Workshop 2)
Peer-To-Peer Filtering Solutions Under Test
InternetEvolution.com publishes groundbreaking EANTC benchmark test of peer-to-peer (P2P) filtering devices.
Internet Evolution, a TechWeb (former CMP) online magazine and SNEP (Syndicat National de l'Édition Phonographique, the organization that represents the interests of the French music industry) commissioned EANTC to independently test the performance and functionality of P2P filters.
The test focused large-scale carrier grade systems designed to filter vast amounts of P2P Internet traffic in real time. We developed new advanced test methodology to conduct realistic application layer tests.Read the complete articlePress release
Mobile Backhaul Interoperability Event at CTIA Wireless 2008 in Las Vegas, USA
EANTC and 15 participating vendors are proud to present the Mobile Backhaul Interoperability Test showcase at the CTIA Wireless in Las Vegas, USA.
The showcase demonstrates a wide range of mobile backhaul solutions all working together over a unified network. We demonstrate various clock synchronization methods, Circuit Emulation for ATM, Ethernet and TDM, migration scenarios, and MEF defined services realized over MPLS, PBB-TE and T-MPLS.
The showcase was previously demonstrated at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain and at the MPLS & Ethernet World Congress in Paris, France.
This time the fine art of mobile backhaul seems to be the knowledge how to put the pieces together. Given the complexity of the infrastructure, carriers are most likely to choose a mix of systems from multiple vendors. With next-gen mobile backhaul, interoperability becomes even more important than before: core and aggregation have traditionally been purchased from different vendors, but now wireless/microwave access, cell-site CPE systems and ATM/TDM interworking units are added to the picture.
This section summarizes the test results in detail.
The interoperability test network will be demonstrated to the public in 3 different events on 2 continents at the follow dates:
- MPLS & Ethernet World Congress
February 06-08, 2008, Paris, France - Mobile World Congress
February 11-14, 2008, Barcelona, Spain - CTIA Wireless 2008
April 01-03, 2008, Las Vegas, USA
Carrier Ethernet World Congress
EANTC AG (European Advanced Networking Test Center) has teamed up with 24 leading vendors to set up the largest and most diverse public Carrier Ethernet multi-vendor interoperability demonstration ever staged.
The results will be publicly showcased at the Carrier Ethernet World Congress in Geneva, Switzerland, between September 25-27, 2007. A demo network consisting of over 65 devices will be constructed; it has been prestaged at EANTC's lab in Berlin in a two-week period in August.
The white paper and more information are available here.
