Network damage simulation test

◆ Background

According to NIST (United States) National Bureau of Standards and Technology research statistics, after the application system is launched, 80% of the total cost is only used to find and find problems; in addition, according to the research of the well-known consulting agency Gartner, more than 70% of the world's application deployments are Is a failure. The fundamental reason is that almost all network equipment testing and application development testing are completed in a relatively perfect laboratory network environment. The communication between any two information endpoints in the real network may need to go through many different physical environments, transmission links, transmission equipment and network equipment. Natural or accidental random events will always occur, resulting in network quality. Damage, common types of network damage are as follows:

Packet loss: network device software and hardware problems; poor line transmission quality causes packet loss; unreasonable network device configuration results in packet loss; unreasonable network design results in packet loss; network conflicts and broadcast flooding cause packet loss;
Time delay: long-distance fiber transmission; network device forwarding processing takes time; application server processing time; network congestion;
Jitter: network congestion; deployment of load balancing equipment; route rollover;
Out of order: network congestion; port bundling; route inversion;
Repeated frames: network loop; abnormal protocol stack;
Physical layer damage: dispersion or power attenuation, crosstalk and uncertain system noise, environmental interference, etc .

◆ Solution

Since the network quality damage in the real Internet cannot be avoided, can we simulate the real network environment in the test network environment? Simulate a specific network quality model to verify the impact on upper-layer applications? Can the prophet discover the problems that may arise in practical applications? The answer is to use a network damage meter. Xcompass-S series network damage meter is a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) platform launched by Xinertel, which can provide realistic and repeatable network damage test results. It has typical damage simulation functions such as bandwidth limitation, delay / jitter, packet loss, out-of-sequence, repeated packets, physical link damage, etc., and can set up 8 types of scenarios at the same time. To verify the impact on the upper-layer application services under a specific network damage model (such as a specific packet loss rate, a specific delay and jitter).

◆ Solution advantages

· Can simulate multiple damages of Ethernet lines (delay, jitter, out of order, speed limit, packet loss, repeated frames, frame overwrite replacement, packet damage, physical link damage);
· Based on FPGA hardware architecture,  After the loss of loading, it does not affect the line-speed forwarding capability of the device; at a 10G interface rate, it supports a maximum of 800ms delay damage, and at a 1G interface rate, it supports a maximum of 8s delay damage;
· Support 10/100/1000 Ethernet RJ45 or SFP interface, 10G SFP + interface;
· The software is based on the B / S architecture, with simple configuration and easy maintenance;