GL Enhances PacketExpert with MPLS and VLAN (Q-in-Q)

25th July 2011

ES Admin

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GL Communications has announced the release of its enhanced PacketExpert with MPLS and VLAN (Q-in-Q) network testing capabilities. Speaking to the press, Mr. Jagdish Vadalia Senior Manager at GL said, PacketExpert™ is a portable Quad Port Ethernet / VLAN / MPLS / IP / UDP Tester with 4 Electrical Ethernet Ports (10/100/1000 Mbps) and 2 Optical Ports (1000 Mbps). PacketExpert™ connects to a Notebook PC through a USB 2.0 interface and each port provides independent Ethernet / VLAN / MPLS / IP / UDP testing at wirespeed for applications such as BERT, RFC 2544, and Loopback.”

He explained, “MPLS is a switching technology that achieves low latency, high throughput, and an efficient routing scheme for all types of traffic. Quality of Service (QoS) and traffic engineering are inherent features of MPLS. Testing essentially involves sending appropriately formatted MPLS packets through an MPLS provisioned network and verifying:
Connectivity - traffic is properly routed to the correct destination, i.e Label Switching Path
Performance - QoS characterstics like Packet Loss, Bandwidth, and Latency are controlled within defined limits
Both end to end testing from customer edge to customer edge as well as testing within the core MPLS network is important. GL’s PacketExpert™ does both and it supports up to 3 MPLS stacked labels. Multiple MPLS label stacks are particularly useful in testing MPLS VPN implementations, multiple MPLS providers and MPLS tunnels. Supports full editing options for MPLS header and provides detailed statistics.
PacketExpert™ allows users to configure the Label Value, the Class of Service (CoS) bits and the Time-to-Live (TTL) for each label, in addition to selecting the number of MPLS labels. It automatically inserts the Bottom of Stack flag. Also, MPLS related statistics like the Packet Counts per Stack position are provided for detailed analysis.
PacketExpert™ combines MPLS testing with the BERT and RFC 2544 test capabilities. It can send MPLS enabled streams in its BERT and RFC 2544 tests and report various QoS measurements like Bit Error Rate, Throughput, Frame Loss, and Latency.”
Mr. Vadalia further explained, “VLAN stands for Virtual Local Area Network. As the name suggests, VLAN technology enables creation of multiple logical networks on the same physical Ethernet LAN. It achieves this by using the VLAN tagging. Stacked VLAN (Q-in-Q) support has been added to the BERT and RFC 2544 tests of PacketExpert™. BERT and RFC 2544 support VLAN tagging up to 3 levels and as part of configuring the BERT / RFC 2544 test stream.”
He added, “Users can configure the VLAN ID, the Priority bits and even the Ether/Type field for each VLAN stack. Also, users can select the number of VLAN stacks and enabling Q-in-Q in BERT and RFC 2544 testing permits verification of VLAN QoS requirements.”