Anyone do a lot of throughput testing?

[Tikker]

I'm updating some of our testing procedures and documentation at work, and I'm not really thrilled with what I have to work with. Does anyone here do any testing of this nature?

what tools do you use? what kind of tests do you do, statistics do you collect?

[Naethyn]

perfmon

Powershell has a lot of neat tests also.

We do a lot of mass scale server throughput testing for disk space, memory allocation etc. Powershell is a great tool as it can use the .net framework to access namespaces such as WMI.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa394252(VS.85).aspx

[Tikker]

I guess I should have been a bit more specific, sorry

This is for a networking environment, probably 80% Cisco, 20% Alcatel


I need something that will scale from 100mb circuits all the way up to 10GBPS (OC192)

it'll need to support L2TP,Vlans (obviously), IPv4/IPv6, etc etc
We're currently using IXIA test sets, but at $100k+ per card it's not really something we can roll out en masse

[vonkaar]

If it has to examine sonet up to 10gig the price is going to hurt, no way around it. Chariot can... up to 1gig and simulate multiple user streams and packet sizes. But to look inside a carrier size circuit like an OC192, the test equipment can easily run higher than $100k per test set.

But... really... unless you ARE the carrier, there's probably no reason to own that kind of equipment. You'd be better served to contract it out for audit validation or just trust the SLA report that your carrier sends you when you tell them that they're not meeting it.

[vonkaar]

However... depending on what you want to see, Netflow might provide the appropriate benchmark. The alcatel gear is probably media gateways not routers, yeah? So the route points could feed netflow stats to a netflow collector (much cheaper). But... it's hard to say netflow is right tool without knowing what needs to be tested.

[Arlos]

Tikker works for a major Canadian Telcom and ISP. Think SBC equivalent. So yes, they ARE the carrier.

-Arlos

[Tikker]

However... depending on what you want to see, Netflow might provide the appropriate benchmark. The alcatel gear is probably media gateways not routers, yeah?

nope, we're talking about 7750's, 7450's, etc etc

and yes, like arlos said, we're the ISP

long story short, we're now offering 10gbps LAN connections, and I'm somewhat struggling to come up with testing procedures. Mostly because it's not a very common service anywhere yet, and there's really not a lot of test gear out there

[Tossica]

However... depending on what you want to see, Netflow might provide the appropriate benchmark. The alcatel gear is probably media gateways not routers, yeah?

nope, we're talking about 7750's, 7450's, etc etc

and yes, like arlos said, we're the ISP

long story short, we're now offering 10gbps LAN connections, and I'm somewhat struggling to come up with testing procedures. Mostly because it's not a very common service anywhere yet, and there's really not a lot of test gear out there

10 GIG connections?

[Arlos]

Sorry I'm no help on this Tikk, biggest circuit I ever had to test was a DS3, and that I did in conjunction with Bell South. That and I'm kinda rusty witht he latest gear from being out of the game for a while.

-Arlos

[Tikker]

10 GIG connections?

yup

these are multi-premise LAN connections, not pipes to the internet

it's a way for say, insurance companies with multiple offices to link all their databases, terminals, etc

we just started offering that this summer

previously most stuff was in the 100mb/1gb range

[vonkaar]

Do you want to validate that the circuit can transmit 10g? What item are you wanting to measure? Bandwidth/throughput? What is the protocal on the carrier infrastructure... like, not what you are delivering, but what the backbone runs on?

[Tikker]

Do you want to validate that the circuit can transmit 10g?

Yes, that's basically step 1

What item are you wanting to measure? Bandwidth/throughput?

throughput is essentially all we're really testing for right now. ability to do L2TP is the other. I was mostly curious if anyone else is testing other parameters

What is the protocal on the carrier infrastructure... like, not what you are delivering, but what the backbone runs on?

IP

I'm not really sure exactly what you're asking in this last one. Virtually everything these days is Ethernet. there's not much ATM left, or frame relay

[vonkaar]

sorry, forgot about this post...

layer 2 protocol, so... ethernet

I'm asking a buddy @ AT&T all of this so... I'll get back to you.