Enterprise network turn-up testing

When adding new capacity, either within an existing location, or a completely new location, its tempting to trust the specs provided by router, firewall, IPS and switch manufacturers. However, unless you are buying a turnkey solution, no single provider will guarantee the end to end system performance. It would in fact be unreasonable to expect this.

Modeling tools are available, but as with all models, it is only as good as the data you put into a model and no model is a perfect representation of your particular situation. This process is shown below, either a paper design or a modelled design goes straight to build and, critically, straight to live use.

End users will now discover:

• If the design was correct and the service is acceptable.
• If the build was correct and nothing went wrong.

Netrounds active test and monitoring solution enables service testing of new network build and network expansion.  As a pure software based solution, it is quick and easy to deploy. The new network design parameters can be input via the GUI, as a set of tests, such as:

• UDP
• TCP
• DSCP markings
• MTU sizes
• DNS
• HTTP

Tests can be combined in series or parallel, so it is possible to create a test to push 100Mbps to over 10Gbps through a link and perform additional tests in parallel, to stress test different service performance. For example, how is VoIP behaving whilst the interface is 80% loaded?