What’s it like on the WAN?

Anticipating how a new application will perform over the WAN doesn’t have to be a blind guessing game, thanks to a slew of simulation and testing tools.

Anticipating how a new application will perform over the WAN doesn’t have to be a blind guessing game, thanks to a slew of simulation and testing tools.

WAN emulators can simulate different WAN conditions so enterprises can gauge – from the comfort of their testing labs — how applications will perform over links of different sizes, with varying levels of congestion, packet loss and delay. Prices run the gamut from freeware to appliances costing tens of thousands of dollars, depending of the level of sophistication required.

This week Apposite Technologies announced an affordable option geared for enterprise network managers. Apposite’s Linktropy Mini2 is a compact version of the company’s higher-end Linktropy appliances. The Mini2 can simulate WAN links of up to 100 Mbps and 80,000 packets per second, and it costs $1,975.

The device is designed to be small, lightweight and low-power; it weighs just 1 pound and has no moving parts, the vendor says.

Working from a browser-based interface, IT managers can plug in link variables such as bandwidth, delay, and packet loss and see how an application – whether it’s a file transfer, database application, video or voice — would perform given certain network impairments. The idea is to simulate conditions ranging from a typical T-3 or T-1 connection to a DSL, satellite or wireless network link, so IT can anticipate and remedy performance problems before an application goes live.

The Mini2 can’t emulate background traffic, nor does it offer live condition capture and reply, packet reordering or packet duplication features. But for more comprehensive testing features such as these, Apposite offers the Linktropy 4500, 7500, 7500 PRO, and 10-G models.

Apposite was founded in early 2005 and is based in Los Angeles. The Linktropy Mini2 is available today.