* Agilent Technologies’ Network Tester
Among the newsmakers at last week’s Supercomm was network test and measurement vendor Agilent Technologies, which showcased products to test high-speed data, VoIP and video applications and traffic, as well as tools to ensure network equipment performs optimally under the load of demanding applications.
Agilent’s Network Tester helps network managers simulate in their test labs “thousands of users of proprietary applications with different user addresses through a unique dynamic-session capture-replay capability,” Agilent says. The tester can help labs determine how many proprietary applications and how much traffic network and security equipment can handle. Agilent says the software recreates real transport protocol sessions with unique port numbers and multiplies traffic in a scalable manner.
Network Tester also determines the effectiveness of application traffic management techniques such as peer-to-peer rate limiting, Layer 7 “deep packet” classification and tagging, and application prioritization. The software could help network managers understand how voice and video traffic will affect other applications on their network.
A second product, the Agilent N2X “multi-service test solution” is geared toward equipment vendors and helps manufacturers determine how to build reliability, scalability and availability into their products. The company says this test product will give equipment vendors the tools to ensure their gear can support data, voice and video traffic on demanding networks.
Lastly, Agilent spotlighted the Distributed Network Analyzer (DNA) PRO suite at Supercomm. The company says the product family ties testing of access network technologies into a single product. Agilent says DNA PRO collects and analyzes voice, video and data information in real time on a variety of networks, such as Ethernet, ATM, frame relay and MPLS.
