Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) Conform…

Test Solution Requirements

MPLS test tools must be able to perform a wide variety of functions to test and validate MPLS devices and systems adequately. For conformance testing, the test solution must be able to fully exercise the control plane of the device or system under test. For performance and scalability testing, the test solution must be able to emulate MPLS routers at the control plane level and scale up for large capacity testing. And it must be able to drive traffic through the system at the data plane level to fully stress the device being tested.

Optimized hardware platform

While simple router emulations can be run on PCs or workstations, an optimized test system must be employed to provide complete testing capabilities and high levels of scalability. For example, to emulate a large network, a network interface on a test tool must support hundreds or even thousands of IP interfaces and MAC addresses? requirements that standard off-the-shelf hardware cannot support. Purpose-built test hardware is required to provide the flexibility and scalability needed to adequately test MPLS equipment.

Routing protocol emulation

The test solution must be able to emulate the full range of routing protocols used in today抯 networks, including OSPF, IS-IS, RIP, and BGP. These routing protocols are used to advertise the underlying network topologies over which the MPLS network is established. In addition, traffic engineering extensions to these protocols, for example OSPF-TE and IS-IS-TE, must be supported to allow this aspect of MPLS to be tested.

Signaling protocol emulation

MPLS signaling protocols must be supported to establish MPLS tunnels and signal L2 and L3 VPNs. Examples of these protocols include LDP, RSVP-TE, and MP瑽GP. The test tool must be able to run these protocols simultaneously with the routing protocols on the same network interface.

Traffic generation

Once the MPLS network has been established and all connections signaled, the test tool must be able to inject data traffic into the network topology, at speeds up to line rate, and it must be able to receive traffic as well. This means sending traffic over all of the LSPs configured on the test interfaces. On the receiving side, the test tool must be able to gather statistics and capture the traffic for analysis. An increasingly common requirement for test tools is to emulate real enterprise applications over the network. This allows for the characterization of the network in terms the end user really cares about, namely, how their applications will perform.

Automation

Since MPLS testing involves complex setup and analysis requirements, tests must be repeatable, which makes automation very important. Scripting languages are normally used to provide automation in MPLS router testing. These tools enable quality assurance and manufacturing environments to perform repeatable regression tests necessary to ensure product functionality and quality.

Ixia抯 Approach to MPLS Testing

MPLS conformance testing

Ixia has addressed the challenges of protocol conformance testing by developing IxANVL (Ixia Automated Network Validation Library), the industry standard conformance test suite. While supporting over 30 protocols overall, IxANVL contains over 800 test cases to validate routers for MPLS label encapsulation, and LDP and RSVP-TE protocol conformance. IxANVL provides positive as well as negative test cases against the RFCs that specify these standards. Negative tests help validate device response to 搆iller packets.?br>
IxANVL performs its tests as a dialog: it sends packets to the router being tested, receives the packets sent in response, and then analyzes the response to determine the next action to take. This allows IxANVL to test complicated situations or reactions in a much more intelligent and flexible way than can be done by simple packet generation and capture devices.

IxANVL can run on standalone workstations or on Ixia test hardware. Its operation can be completely automated using a scripting interface. IxANVL source code is also available to users for customization, allowing a great degree of testing flexibility.

MPLS scalability and performance testing

The general methodology employed by Ixia for testing the scalability and performance of MPLS routers involves first surrounding the device or system under test (DUT/SUT) with Ixia hardware test interfaces. The Ixia system then emulates everything else needed to test the device, including other MPLS routers, IP route injection, LSP signaling, and traffic transmission. In this way, large and complex topologies can be simulated to test the DUT/SUT in realistic system environments, with a minimum of hardware requirements. As an example, in Figure 6, four Ixia test interfaces are connected to the DUT with numerous routers being emulated per interface.

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