[ 1. General ]
[ 2. Architecture ]
[ 3. Tools and equipment ]
[ 4. Contacts ]
1. General
The Internet protocol lab is located on the 2nd floor in the F-building (room F272).
The lab is available for practical exercises in different courses and themes as well as for student projects, MSc Thesis and PhD research. In addition the lab may act as a ordinary computer laboratory.
2. Architecture
The lab equipment can be divided into 5 groups, measurement tools, traffic generators, switches and routers, network emulators, and terminals. The set up reflects the need to generate a load on switches and routers, manipulate the various traffic conditions a flow will be exposed to, and measure the properties of a traffic flow. The terminals act as interfaces to the tools as well as hosts for simple traffic generators and more advance traffic measurement software.
3. Tools and equipment
3.1 Measurement tools
Two different tools are used for measurements, commercial tools from Agilient and the more experimental DAG cards used in research projects.
3.1.1 Agilent
The network analyser J6800A is a generic measurement system that can be interfaced to different physical network technology. The lab currently has only the fast Ethernet interface, but modules for different WAN technologies are available. The analyser offers the following features:
- Supports any available LAN or WAN/ATM LIM
- LIMs are hot-swappable and interchangeable
- Full-rate capture from any LIM up to 1 Gb/s
- 256 MB capture memory per LIM
- 32 real-time hardware capture filters
- Advanced auto-encapsulation detection
- Internal time-synchronization between acquisition systems
- Interfaces for external GPS receiver for global time-synchronization
- Agilent Control & Sync technology hardware provided to allow time-synchronization of one or more attached J6801A Distributed Network Analyzer
Quote [ http://we.home.agilent.com ]
The software in the analyser is also installed in regular workstations (will be installed once the latest release is available). They offer the same interface, but the measurements have less precision.
The analyzer also has traffic generation capabilities through generating packet streams with given bandwidth and inter packet gaps.
[ Analyser functionality description ]
[ Documentation ]
3.1.2 Dag cards
DAG (produced by endace) is a high performance interface card designed for capturing of packets in local and wide area networks. The DAG cards are inside a linux-PC equipped with software for both real time analysis and recording of network data. Unlike regular network interface cards, the DAG cards are optimised for sustained performance under extreme load conditions.
We have 4-port DAG cards with 100 FE interface synchronised by GPS-pulses.
[ More information about DAG cards ]
[ Documentation ]
3.1.3 RADCOM Performer Analyzer
In the lab there is a RADCOM VOIP Performer Analyzer targeting analysis of VOIP.. It has a MediaPro hardware module for VOIP call monitoring at protocol and encoding level. In addition, it can perform traffic analysis ,and traffic capturing, and replaying.
[ More information - please visit the performer's pages ]
[ Documentation ]
3.2 Network emulator
The lab has one network emulator. It accepts traffic at one fast Ethernet port, transforms the traffic and sends it out on an associated port. The traffic can be delayed, lost, duplicated or reorder according to various distributions. Up to eight different traffic flows can be transformed. With the emulator, most traffic conditions can be emulated in a repeatable fashion.
The network emulator box (Empirix Packetsphere) can be reached at [ http://packetsphere.item.ntnu.no ] which is its web-based interface. To access documentation for the server, simply click on "User".
[ Description of Network Emulator ]
[ Documentation ]
3.3 Traffic generators
3.3.1 GenSyn
Generation of Synthetic IP traffic (GenSyn ) is a traffic generator written in Java.
GenSyn has defined a flexible and scalable modelling framework. The stochastic user behaviour is described by state diagrams. The stochastic user behaviour model controls the creation of TCP connections and UDP streams through interface modules that links the GenSyn process to the underlying Internet protocol stack on the workstation.
[ A short user guide (skip to installation parts) ]
3.3.2 Agilent
The analyser described in Section 3.1.1 also has traffic generation capabilities through generating packet streams with given bandwidth and inter packet gaps.
[ The functionality description ]
3.4 Routers
There are currently 8 ARN and 4 ASN routers. The main differences between these 2 are the ability to handle stackable scalability, WAN protocol and redundant power supply which can only be found in ASN.
3.4.1 Nortel Advanced Remote Node (ARN)
The ASN router integrates several functions of multiple devices into one box. With software integration, it can provide traffic management (data compression, traffic prioritization, uniform traffic filters) and remote management. Software and configuration files can be further utilized via additional PCMCIA memory card.
It supports following protocol: LAN protocols (IP, IPX, AppleTalk, VINES, DECnet, OSI and XNS); Bridging (Tranparent, Translation, Native Mode LAN) and IBM integration (Source Route Bridge, LAN Network Management Agent, DLSw, Transparent Sync Pass-Through, BSC Pass-Through, APPN)
Each of them has following interfaces: RJ-45 (10BASE-T), RJ-45 (10BASE-TX), AUI, 3 Serials and a BNC
[ Documentation ]
3.4.2 Nortel Access Stack Node (ASN)
The ASN router is a stackable router which provides seamless integration of multiple (maximum of 4) ASN units as a logical router. Its unique features are stackable, hot-swap, alternate path routing, partial booting and redundant power supply. It has optimization features such as hardware and software-based data compression, priority queuing and uniform traffic filters and bandwidth aggregation. Working with software, the router provides fully integrated Virtual LAN and WAN remote office concentration.
It supports following protocol: LAN protocols (IP, IPX, AppleTalk, VINES, DECnet, OSI and XNS); Bridging (Tranparent, Source Route and Translation); WAN (PPP, Frame Relay, SMDS, X.25, ISDN BRI/PRI and ATM DXI) and IBM integration (DLSw, APPN, Bisynch [Sync] over TCP/IP); Expanded IP support (IPv4, OSPF, BGP-4, NAT, IP Multicast and IPv6)
Each of them has following interfaces
- Ethernet Interface (15-pin AUI connector or 8-pin modular)
- Token Ring Interface (9-pin MAU connector)
- FDDI (2 MIC, one RJ-11 optical bypass)
- Synchronous Interface (44- and 50-pin connector to RS-422, RS-232, V.35 and X.21 adapter cable)
- ISDN BRI and ISDN PRI
- 100BASE-T Interface (40-pin MII connector or 8-pin modular)
- MCT1 (RJ-48C, 15-pin, DB connector)
- MCE1 (BNC, 75 ohm, 8-pin modular, 120 ohm)
[ Documentation ]
3.5 Switches
3.5.1 Nortel Business Policy Switch
The Business Policy Switch 2000 (BPS2000) is a 24-ports high-density, stackable 10/100 Mbps Ethernet Layer 2 switch. Its core features are stackable, QoS & Policy Management, Queuing Function, MultiLink Trunking, Web-based management, Traffic Policing, VLAN, IGMP Snooping, Network Management, Multiple Spanning Tree Protocol, IP management and IP traffic sharing. Currently, there are 12 boxes of BPS2000.
[ Documentation ]
4. Contacts
[ Professor Ø. Kure ] manages the project
[ Ph.D student Kjetil Haslum ] has the operational technical responisibility
[ Professor Poul Heegaard ] is THE expert on DAG cards and Gensys