Re: Independent Testing for Network Hardware

["Thomas Maufer" <tmaufer () gmail com>]

</lurk>

I apologize for neglecting to mention the excellent test labs I've worked
with in Europe, including EANTC (in Germany) and West Coast Labs (in Wales,
I believe). Both are highly reputable and have access to lots of test
equipment (and they know how to use it!).

<lurk>




On Mon, Jul 21, 2008 at 11:13 PM, Thomas Maufer <tmaufer () gmail com> wrote:

> Isocore is good, but there are many others to choose from: Network Test,
> ExtremeLabs, Miercom, Core Competence, Opus One, in no particular order. I
> can personally recommend all of those (I have no experience with Tolly so I
> can't recommend them).
>
> If you are really interested in application performance, a lab is probably
> a better choice than a hardware purchase since they can help you interpret
> the results, especially if you'll be like most test equipment users (having
> test equipment used more than 10% of the time is rare). The results you'll
> get from Ixia's and Spirent's load testing tools are pretty cut and
> dried...very straightforward to interpret but depending on your application
> maybe relatively meaningless. For application performance, there are many
> tools you could consider, many of which are very specialized and thus don't
> have broad applicability.
>
> I'd recommend talking to any of the labs above and see what kind of testing
> they would use in a given situation before you run out and buy some test
> equipment. Good luck!
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, Jul 21, 2008 at 10:09 AM, Tomas L. Byrnes <tomb () byrneit net>
> wrote:
>
> > For independent testing, Kevin Tolly's been at it a long time, and has
> > shown himself to be fair.
> >
> > http://www.tolly.com/
> >
> >
> >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: Sean Hafeez [mailto:sah.list () gmail com]
> > > Sent: Friday, July 18, 2008 2:07 PM
> > > To: Frank P. Troy
> > > Cc: rpapneja () isocore com; nanog () merit edu
> > > Subject: Re: Independent Testing for Network Hardware
> > >
> > > IXIA makes a nice product depending on what you want to do. I
> > > have one here with some 10G line cards.
> > >
> > > -Sean
> > >
> > > On Jul 10, 2008, at 3:02 PM, Frank P. Troy wrote:
> > >
> > > > I can recommend Isocore http://www.isocore.com/ (the same
> > > folks that
> > > > run the MPLS conference).  Talk to Rajiv Papneja
> > > > [rpapneja () isocore com].
> > > >
> > > > Regards,
> > > > Frank
> > > >
> > > > ------------------------------------
> > > >   Frank P. Troy
> > > >   703-396-8700
> > > >   frank () troy-networks com
> > > > -------------------------------------
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > -----Original Message-----
> > > > From: Brian Knoll (TT) [mailto:Brian.Knoll () tradingtechnologies com]
> > > > Sent: Thursday, July 10, 2008 11:16 AM
> > > > To: nanog () merit edu
> > > > Subject: Independent Testing for Network Hardware
> > > >
> > > > Can anyone recommend a reliable independent testing company
> > > that tests
> > > > network hardware performance?
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > We are considering buying testing hardware (right now we
> > > are looking
> > > > at Spirent TestCenter) and I wanted to see if there were other
> > > > options...
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Brian Knoll