“Testing tomorrow’s Ethernet” is the aim of a new, small form factor appliance from Spirent Communications, a compact and flexible platform that the company says can help accelerate time to market and assure successful deployments of new technologies.
The M1 Appliance offers a comprehensive portfolio of products to help generate, analyze, capture and filter network packets. Source: Spirent CommunicationsThe M1 Appliance is designed for the entire test life cycle for functional, performance and benchmark testing of new networking products targeting network infrastructure, along with validating evolving technologies for software-defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV). Spirent says that the architecture of the M1 Appliance — with its maximum of eight network interface card (NIC) slots and support for a wide variety of NIC combinations — delivers higher reliability and density compared to the previous generation of compact appliances.
That variety of NIC combinations translates to the ability to create additional appliance kits for specific testing needs, while the small form factor offers lower power consumption than larger-chassis models. The low noise of the appliance allows benchtop operation in proximity to users; for users lacking dedicated lab space, the M1 enables test systems to be distributed among multiple locations.
Optimal uses for the M1 Appliance include network traffic, broadband testing, SDN and data center validation, device benchmarking, core and edge routers and switch verification, carrier Ethernet verification, and subscriber emulation.
Key benefits include:
- Smaller footprint for more efficient lab space use, delivering core testing capabilities at a lower port count and scale while using less power and generating less heat.
- Cost-effective tool designed for specific application testing and select performance use cases, plus verifying functionality on Ethernet speeds from 10M to 100G. Interconnect options include long reach optical transceiver, short reach optical transceiver, direct attach copper (DAC) cable and 1GBASE-T.
- Improved customer experience through a seamless testing experience without a steep learning curve, along with components that are easily serviceable in the field.
The M1 is also a fit for complex automotive hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) systems built to validate the Ethernet-based, software-defined cars of the future.
A full suite of Spirent TestCenter protocols and test packages are available for the M1 Appliance. More information about Spirent’s next-generation network and infrastructure testing is available at the company’s TestCenter Hardware page.
