Napatech has released a new white paper outlining how standard server hardware and Napatech intelligent adapters can be used to build affordable traffic generation systems. This promises to extend the availability of test equipment to engineers that previously could not be served due to price.

“Test systems are complex pieces of equipment, which are typically on the forefront of technology development”, said Erik Norup, President, Napatech Inc. “Development of these systems is costly and they are therefore priced accordingly. However, the high price-tag usually means that organizations can only afford to buy a few of these systems, which in turn means that development engineers have to contend for access to test resources.”

Napatech’s white paper “Traffic Generation for the mainstream Ethernet Market" describes how it is possible for a vendor of test and measurement equipment to build a relatively low-cost traffic generation system based on off-the-shelf hardware and software. This can be used for packet blasting, loopback testing and other test cases, which are generally sufficient for development engineers.

“We have identified a need for a full line-rate traffic generation solution that can be addressed with standard servers and Napatech’s intelligent adapters”, added Norup. This is an opportunity for test and measurement equipment vendors, who would be OEM customers of Napatech. “The OEMs can provide significant value to a broader set of their customers, namely development engineers. This means faster time-to-market as projects are not delayed while waiting for access to limited test resources”.

At the recent Interop New York show, Napatech successfully demonstrated a full 20 Gbps traffic generation system based on a standard server, Napatech’s NT20E2 intelligent adapter and Ostinato open-source traffic generator software. More details on this demonstration are available in the white paper, and videos also available on Napatech’s website.

For more information, contact Napatech at www.napatech.com.