LANforge Gaming Solutions

LANforge Ice Multi-port WAN Emulator - Great for testing online gaming!

The Multi-port WAN emulator is an excellent choice for high-density WAN emulation. The Multi-port is a set of 3 machines: One LANforge machine to do the WAN emulation, one Linux bridge machine to bridge the VLANs, and an off-the-shelf managed ethernet switch supporting 802.1Q VLANs.

The user's stations plug into the ethernet switch and speak regular ethernet (no 802.1Q VLAN support is required in the devices-under-test.) The bridge machine usually requires no active maintainance or configuration, and the LANforge machine may be managed locally or remotely with the LANforge-GUI. This configuration is available in 8,16, 24, 48 and 96 port configurations. Contact your sales representative for pricing and configuration details.

 

 LANforge-ICE multi-port WAN emulator system

The LANforge-ICE system can have a large number of 802.1Q VLAN interfaces.  Each physical port on the VLAN switch maps to a separate VLAN, and the LANforge-ICE WAN emulation is applied to specific VLANs.  This allows a large number of distinct WAN emulations with a single LANforge machine. Each VLAN (port) can be associated with a bridge or a router.  The bridge group can contain one or more VLANs.  Virtual Routers can be used to provide routing between bridge groups.  This allows the user to configure clients into one or more broadcast domains. All stations will talk through the LANforge-ICE WAN emulator regardless of which other stations they are communicating with.   The 802.1Q VLAN switch has one interface configured as an 802.1Q VLAN trunk.  This port connects to LANforge. The other interfaces will be configured such that each interface is mapped to a particular VLAN.  Un-tagged Ethernet frames are sent to and received from the user’s end station(s) and the up-stream network.

The customer’s end stations speak regular Ethernet and plug into the 802.1Q VLAN switch.  If the LANforge system is set up as a router, the end stations will use their associated bridge interface as the default gateway.  The LANforge system can also be configured as a transparent layer-2 bridge. The LF-Bridge system provides easy insertion into the network under test.

LANforge Netsmith Diagram for CT970 Configuration with Routing

 

LANforge Ice

LANforge ICE: Feature Highlights
LANforge Netsmith: Virtual Network Builder
LANforge NetReplay & Backtrack Feature Highlights
LANforge ICEcap Network Probe

LANforge ICE: Feature Highlights

• General purpose WAN and Network impairment emulator.
• Able to simulate DS1, DS3, OC-3, OC-12, OC-24, OC-48, GigE, DSL, CableModem, Satellite links and other rate-limited networks, from 10bps up to 2.4 Gbps speeds (full duplex).
• Can modify various network attributes including: network-speed, latency, jitter, packet-loss, packet-reordering, and packet-duplication.
• Supports Packet corruptions, including bit-flips, bit-transposes and byte-overwrites.
• Supports WanPath feature to allow configuration of specific behaviour between different IP subnets or MAC addresses using a single pair of physical interfaces.
• Able to impair packets based on an arbitary filter that is created using the popular and the well documented tcpdump filter syntax.
• Supports WAN emulation across virtual 802.1Q VLAN interfaces for more efficient use of valuable physical network interfaces.
• Ethernet hardware bypass option allows LANforge to be deployed in networks with high availability requirements.
• Supports routed and bridged mode for more flexibility in how your configure your network and LANforge-ICE. Virtual routers can be configured with the Netsmith tool. Supported routing protocols include: IPv4 static routing, IPv6 static routing, IPv4 OSPF, IPv6 OSPF, IPv4 Multicast routing (IGMP) and BGP. LANforge-ICE on Windows and Solaris supports only bridged mode currently.
• Supports 'WAN-Playback' allowing one to capture the characteristics of a live WAN and later have LANforge-ICE emulate those captured characteristics. The playback file is in XML format, and can be easily created by hand or with scripts. The LANforge-ICEcap tool can be used to probe networks and automatically create the XML playback file.
• Available configurations include all-in-one Netbooks, Laptops, silent appliances and rackmount systems for demo, desktop, benchtop and lab environments.
• Allows packet sniffing and network protocol decoding with the integrated Wireshark protocol sniffer.
• Comprehensive management information detailing all aspects of the LANforge system including processor card statistics, test cases, and ethernet port statistics.
• GUI runs as Java application on Linux, Solaris and Microsoft Operating Systems (among others).
• GUI can run remotely, even over low-bandwidth links to accommodate the needs of the users.
• Central management application can manage multiple units, tests, and testers simultaneously.
• Supports scriptable command line interface (telnet) which can be used to automate test scenarios. Perl libraries and example scripts are also provided!
• Automatic discovery of LANforge processor cards simplifies maintenance of LANforge test equipment.
• LANforge systems come pre-installed and configured with customer supplied network information.
• LANforge-FIRE feature set may be combined with LANforge-ICE for more realistic testing.

LANforge Netsmith: Virtual Network Builder

Netsmith is a drag-and-drop virtual network builder. It can support virtual routers, emulated network links, bridges (switches), virtual and physical interfaces, and more. When using routers, it supports static routing for IPv4 and IPv6, OSPF routing for IPv4 and IPv6 and IPv4 multicast routing protocols. LANforge-FIRE stateful traffic generating connections and LANforge-ICE network emulations are easily placed in the virtual networks. The virtual routers can connect to external OSPF and multicast routers and static subnet routing for easy integration into your network.

• Emulates networks of arbitrary complexity using real-world routing protocols by integrating with the XORP router daemon.
• Supports IPv4 and IPv6 static routing.
• Supports IPv4 and IPv6 OSPF routing.
• Supports IPv4 multicast routing.
• Supports ethernet bridges, including spanning tree protocol (STP).
• The virtual interfaces are 'real', so you can configure them like normal network interfaces and use sniffers and other tools on the individual interfaces.
• Virtual router interconnections can be associated with LANforge-ICE network emulations.
• Interfaces can be associated with LANforge-FIRE stateful traffic generation connections.

LANforge NetReplay & Backtrack Feature Highlights

• Using a combination of the LANforge-FIRE traffic generation and LANforge-ICE network emulation, LANforge supports capture and replay of ethernet packet streams.
• Capture protocol can be converted to standard 'libpcap' format for use with other tools such as Ethereal and tcpdump.
• Capture has been benchmarked at 1Gbps bi-directional on high-end hardware using 6TB RAID configuration.

LANforge ICEcap Network Probe Feature Highlights

• The LANforge-ICEcap tool can probe a network and save the probed latency, packet loss and other values to an XML file that can be replayed by the LANforge-ICE WAN emulator. This allows for realistic WAN emulations based on real-world networks.
• LANforge-ICEcap currently supports Linux and Windows.

LANforge Ice Network Packet Impairments

Simulates WAN or LAN latencies

Features and Packet Impairments	Description
Bi-Directional	Simulates different connection types on each side of a WAN connection, T1, DSL, Cable, Wireless or Satellite.
Pass Through	Adds impairments as packets are received in one Ethernet interface and transmitted out the other interface.
802.1Q VLAN	Able to bridge 802.1Q VLAN Interfaces.
Router	Allows LANforge Ice to act like a router.
Buffer	Emulates the smoothing buffer found on equipment used in Wide-Area-Networks. The buffers are implemented to smooth bursty traffic so that packets are not needlessly dropped.
Delay/Latency	The time it takes in mili-seconds for a packet of data to get from one designated point to another.
Jitter	Simulates the variation in the time between packets arriving, caused by network congestion, timing drift, or route changes.
Drop	Simulates the disappearance of a packet that was transmitted or ought to have been transmitted. Packets can also be dropped in a burst or specifically every xth packet.
Duplicate	Simulates duplication occurs when one packet becomes two (or more) identical packets. Can also specify every xth packet.
Re-Order	Packets are moved out of order from their original sequence. This packet delay has an earlier packet being delayed greater than a subsequent packet. The subsequent packet will arrive before the earlier packet.
Bit Error	Inserts random or periodic errors in either the payload only or the complete packet. Supports packet corruptions, including bit-flips, bit-transposes and byte overwrites. Able to specify multiple corruptions.
Checksum	Recalculates the IP, UDP, and TCP checksum for a packet after applying the corruption. This will allow the corrupted packet to be accepted by the stacks on the receiving machine as if the data were actually valid.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can LANforge Ice be purchased as software?
Yes, or it can also be purchased as an appliance.

What type of hardware and operating system is required by LANforge Ice?
LANforge Ice uses Industry standard PC hardware and can run on Windows and Linux.

How is LANforged Ice Licensed?
WAN Emulation Products are licensed by the bps rate supported.

What is the simplest configuration for LANforge?
LANforge works as a bridge and adds network impairments as specified to the packets. It is ideal for testing Client/Server application performance.

What is the highest bps rate supported by LANforge Ice?
LANforge Ice can support up to 2.4Gbps bi-directional, which is equivalent to an OC48 connection.

Can LANforge Ice be used to simulate a Wide Area Network with multiple locations?
LANforge Ice can be configured with many NIC ports, each port can represent a virtual router, and each virtual router can be linked to other virtual routers (WANlinks). Each WANlink can be configured for speed and the network impairments desired. Special versions have been configured for the gaming industry to test Internet games.

What are some of the network impairments LANforge Ice offers?
LANforge Ice can modify various network attributes including: network-speed, latency, jitter, packet-loss, packet reordering, and packet-duplication. It also supports packet corruptions, including bit-flips, bit-transposes and byte-overwrites.