Traffic Generator / Host Emulator

["Josh Gomez" <Josh.Gomez () sygate com>]

I have a few Snort boxes in place for my test environment & now I need
to make my environment real.
 
I need to do some serious traffic generating (all kinds).
Was wondering if anyone could suggest some good solutions (commercial
products/appliances ok).
 
Preferably need something that can simulate thousands of hosts on a
network/segment, generate the assoicated traffic as well as bring up
MAC/IP's.
If I could simulate a network/LAN with at least 5-10,000 nodes on it,
generate various kinds of traffic, including netBios & the like that
would be cool.
 
Would really be cool if I could have these virtual nodes appear as a
variety of OS types, i.e. Windows.
Does anything like this even exist?
 
VMware is great but it has it's limitations, (only about 1/2 dozen
Virtual machines per CPU).
Would be nice if there was magic box!
 
Will be cool if the box is able to generate DOS / Security attacks & the
like.
 
Any suggestions?
 
 
 
Thanks...