Thanks, but those products are not routers and switches... they TEST the capabilities of routers and switches. I'll try to remember that tidbit of using routers AND switches. It might come in handy one day... glad you pointed that one out. Have you considered the possibility of writing a white paper on that idea and sharing it with the group? I'm not an idiot. In the future, it might be good advice to not assume that just because you're not familiar with something you know more than someone else.

-----Original Message----- From: Quibell, Marc [mailto:Marc.Quibell@icn.state.ia.us] Sent: Thursday, October 18, 2001 10:37 AM To: 'tim@eng.bellsouth.net'; NANOG Subject: RE: L2/L3 Testing Vendors - Comments? Praise? Horror Stories?

Sounds like you need more of highend routers...None of those you mentioned mean much to me, I would be looking more in the direction of Lucent, Foundry, Riverstone, Cisco...

And for big jobs use seperate products: Switches AND Routers.

-----Original Message----- From: Tim Irwin [mailto:tim@eng.bellsouth.net] Sent: Thursday, October 18, 2001 9:23 AM To: NANOG Subject: L2/L3 Testing Vendors - Comments? Praise? Horror Stories?

Looking for comments/experiences/war stories on testing products, such as Smartbits, Ixia, Adtech, Agilent, and Ganymede.

Desired functionality: L2: 10/100/1000 Ethernet, ATM, FR, POS, PPPoX session generation L2.5: MPLS, MPLS-TE L3: BGP, OSPF, RSVP, Diff-Serv L4-7: closed-loop testing (i.e., effects of TCP windowing and other types of flow control), VoIP, streaming media, etc.

Not entirely happy with current vendors... Smartbits seems ok for L2, but L3 sucks, often too cumbersome to be productive, and I found some descrepancies and reporting problems with Smartbits, which makes me not want to trust it. Agilent seems to be good at L3, but lacks L2 testing capabilities. Ganymede is good if you want to test application functionality. Past experience with Adtech was L2 only. No clue who makes anything decent to test MPLS, although I believe Agilent does.

Experience with the current vendor market is that they all have their strengths, so you really need a mixture of products to do adequate testing. Just curious if others have similar experiences. Off-list replies welcomed...

Thanks, Tim

-- Tim Irwin, Sr. Engineer Architecture & Engineering BellSouth.net, Inc. e-mail: tim@eng.bellsouth.net office: 678.441.7951

"Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect." -Mark Twain