iTrinegy, specialists in mitigating risk associated with application performance over networks, have announced general availability of INE Version 8.5 Network Emulator. This latest version adds multiple significant new capabilities to the company’s award-winning INE (INE Enterprise & INE Ultra) range of WAN emulators including Cisco® QoS Class of Service Handling & Traffic Shaping, Wireshark®-like packet filtering and built-in Traffic Generation. These additions will ensure the INE range remains one of the most comprehensively featured, fully meshed WAN emulators available with which to verify application performance over networks prior to deployment or migration.
Cisco QoS class of service handling & traffic shaping
The INE range can now model Cisco’s QoS class of service and traffic shaping algorithms, enabling application developers, software testers and network professionals to test an application’s ability to work with Cisco QoS classes, with or without traffic shaping. This new feature will let users try the effects of Cisco QoS and Shaping in their test environment and prove that your applications will work as expected when deployed in the live Cisco network.
Sophisticated Wireshark-like packet classification, filtering & routing
Another new feature is a powerful “classification” engine, providing the ability to classify, route, filter and selectively impair traffic by any packet field (or combination of fields) within any protocol layer (2-7) using a Wireshark-like syntax. An “out of the box” library of various protocols e.g. Ethernet, VLAN, IPv4, IPv6, ARP, TCP, UDP etc. is provided as standard. As a result, users of the INE range will be able to manipulate data packets in just about every conceivable permutation they may require in order to achieve the most realistic test environment.
User-defined protocol definitions
Users are not confined to iTrinegy’s supplied protocol library; they will be able to add their own protocols as well as video & audio codecs and use them in the INE models within minutes. This means custom-built private, prototype or even secret protocols can be deployed straightaway, without any involvement from iTrinegy, which is particularly useful for organisations working in sensitive or secure environments.
Furthermore, because they are automatically compiled with the INE just-in-time (JIT) compiler, user-defined protocol performance will match the same high speed as iTrinegy-supplied protocols. Possible uses include dropping specific frames e.g. I or P frames from video streams, interfering with encrypted traffic flows and more.
Traffic generation
This major enhancement allows the INE emulator range to generate traffic, internally or externally. Now traffic can be generated to load up internal links in the INE in order to provide congestion for the applications under test. There is also an additional benefit that where traffic is generated, this can be affected by emulation features to produce jittered streams, start/stop streams, lossy streams etc. As a result users shouldn’t need to purchase a separate generator.
“Networks are constantly evolving, presenting new challenges to those of us tasked with ensuring application performance across networks. To ensure the iTrinegy INE network emulator range continues to enable you to carry out your tests effectively, we will be releasing INE V8.5 in October,” said Frank Puranik, iTrinegy Product Director. “The major enhancements offered in this latest version will ensure that our INE Enterprise and INE Ultra models remain at the very forefront of emulation technology and continue to provide users with the means to conduct highly realistic verification of application performance over real-world networks. This means that you can be sure that your applications are “proofed” against everything the real world, or hackers, may throw at it.”
