“When I’m trying to test or research customer technologies such as VoIP or wireless, Packetstorm’s network emulators are the best part of my toolkit. I’ve acquired amazing data and information that has impressed both clients and audiences with the flexibility of parameter control and emulation as well as the depth and value of the testing environment and accuracy of measurements and analysis.”-- Dr. Phil Hippensteel, Industry Consultant and Professor of Penn State Harrisburg
Customer Profile - Since 2001, Dr. Hippensteel has been an Assistant Professor of Information Systems for Penn State Harrisburg, a campus of the Pennsylvania State University system, with about 2,400 undergraduate and 1,500 graduate students. In addition, Professor Hippensteel has served as technical consultant to a wide range of clients including schools, government agencies, and manufacturing firms, located throughout the U.S. and Canada. His expertise is in communications network design, specification, troubleshooting and training.
Vendor Profile - PacketStorm Communications, Inc. was founded in November 1998 by a group of engineers from the prestigious Bell Laboratories. PacketStorm develops, manufactures, and supports high end testing solutions for the Internet Protocol (IP) communications market. PacketStorm is the market leader for advanced IP Network Emulators with dynamic and traffic conditioning emulation. PacketStorm sells test solutions through a global network of independent representatives and international distributors.
Editor's Note - As an old Geek in Networking, I have always felt that planning for “What If” and implementation of Pre-Deployment Testing is the most overlooked networking solution and skipping it is a major NMUBAR (similar to a FUBAR but means Network Messed Up Beyond Ability to Repair)! This article about Dr. Hippensteel performing Pre-Deployment Testing to forecast issues that might occur in a REAL Network deployment is an example of what we all should be doing before we deploy new applications, grow current deployments or predict user demand issues.With VoIP, Video-on-Demand and soon IPv6 looming over the deployment horizon and with most networks stretched to their limits, with users who seem to know no rules of proper network usage and with constant attacks from the outside world, network managers must convince upper management that Pre-Deployment and “What if” testing is a necessity to assure a balance between network growth and network up time.
I have had the pleasure of working with many companies that would have benefited much by such controlled planning and testing. For many years there were no reasonable tools available to secure such testing and many of those that wanted to do Pre-Deployment Testing had to hire labs to do the task, this was expensive and not that reliable as it was not a test on a real production network. Today we have tapping technologies like Network Critical that not only allow for one to monitor the network and see 100% of all packets good or bad but now they allow one to inject packets into the network. This technology coupled with the PacketStorm technology would be a powerful “What If” and assurance test technology.
As Network Managers we must be ever vigilant of our networks and with test capabilities of the PacketStorm emulators and access technology that not only allows us to monitor our networks but allows us to have test access, this is a winning combination for providing guidance in your network and application growth. One must always be looking for the next failure point for focused usage of ever smaller budgets and ever increasing demands on the networks and infrastructure. Most times it is difficult to think ahead with all the pressures we face but as the pressure increases on our networks we must try to look ahead just like what you will find in the attached article.
Please let me know what information or what products you want to hear about from us! I wish all of you Great Success with less Stress …. My Best - Oldcommguy
As a professor at Penn State and also a key principal in a private data networking consulting firm, it is absolutely essential that the tools that Dr. Phil Hippensteel relies on are accurate and reliable. Dr. Hippensteel relies on PacketStorm Communications test equipment for his network emulation requirements.
One such project involved the competitive evaluation of various IP-PBX’s, and their resiliency in the face of imperfect networks. The professor created a lab setup which recreated the operating conditions that these IP-PBX’s would encounter in the real world. The IP-PBX’s were attached to the PacketStorm Hurricane network emulator.
Parameters of the simulated network were adjusted with the PacketStorm. Various amounts of packet loss, network delay, and jitter were introduced to the emulated network via the PacketStorm Hurricane. Multiple VoIP endpoints then went about the task of generating VoIP calls. Voice quality was then measured at the endpoints. In subsequent test, the IP-PBX parameters were varied such as changing the codec from the G.711 setting to the G.729 setting. Again, adverse network conditions were emulated and voice quality measured. Using these techniques and test environment, Dr. Hippensteel was able to provide a comprehensive report recommending not only the best performing IP-PBX, but to also provide data of the expectations the client should expect under various IP-PBX settings.
Anther project that Dr. Hippensteel undertook also made use of the PacketStorm’s unique network emulation features. The objective of this project was to develop a course to cover the timer operations, window sizing algorithms, and performance of the TCP protocol. Two PC’s were set up to do file transfers using FTP. The PacketStorm Hurricane was placed between the two PC’s, and was used to introduce various network impairments. The TCP protocol was observed under ideal network conditions and then again under various PacketStorm-induced impaired network conditions. With this controlled environment, Dr. Hippensteel was able to clearly illustrate the inner workings of TCP performance and error correction procedures as they affected file transfer times.
In addition, Dr. Hippensteel made use of the PacketStorm Hurricane network emulator for an evaluation of a commercial vendor’s network measurement and network monitoring equipment. One of the main functions of the vendor’s equipment was to monitor, measure, and report on various network impairment conditions. Using the PacketStorm Communications Hurricane network emulator, Dr. Hippensteel was able to precisely control a host of network impairments such as dropped packets, jitter, fragmented packets, duplicate packets, etc. These accurately reproduced network impairment conditions were then compared to the measurements and reports outputted by the measurement and monitoring equipment and checked for accuracy.
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