Simulation: Simplify Network Management, Testing and Evaluation - Whitepaper



Posted: Wednesday, October 19, 2005

by Sri Latha
http://www.adventnet.com/products/simulator/index.html

Summary

With today's enterprise network infrastructure becoming more complex and dynamic, a successful network management requires more than knowing if a device is available. The NMS must ensure that the network and applications are up-and-running smoothly and efficiently. It must also proactively identify, diagnose and predict potential problems before they have any impact on the network. Recognizing the challenges of enterprise-grade networks, an effective testing and evaluation of network management system (NMS) becomes essential. This requires setting up of an extensive laboratory with multi-vendor network devices, that are cost-prohibitive. Moreover, networks are complicated and extremely expensive, and most vendors cannot afford to set up a real network. To resolve these issues AdventNet Simulation Toolkit a software suite that can simulate real networks, was introduced. This paper explains how AdventNet Simulation Toolkit can be used in the development, testing and evaluation of network management applications.

Introduction

Network management is a service that employs a variety of tools, applications, and devices to assist human network managers in monitoring and maintaining network integrity and performance. The Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is by far, the dominant protocol in network management. Every SNMP-managed network consists of two key components: managed entities and NMS applications. Every managed device (routers, servers, switches, bridges, hubs, computer hosts, cable modems, printers, etc.) on the network has an agent, which is a small program that communicates with the Manager on one side and with Device or Application on the other side The agent stores this information in a management information base (MIB) and makes it available to the NMS by communicating through the SNMP protocol. The NMS uses this information to monitor and control the networked devices. Three versions of SNMP are currently prevalent: SNMPv1, SNMPv2 and SNMPv3. All these versions conform to the specifications of the structure of management information (SMI).

Network management generally involves device management/element management, discovery management, fault management and performance management.

Challenges in Testing and Evaluation of Network Management Applications

In general, the problems with lab maintenance and upgrades, the financial burden involved and the varying requirements of the users is a limitation for effective testing of the network management application.

Virtual Lab with AdventNet Simulation Toolkit

AdventNet Simulation Toolkit provides a solution to the above hurdles in NMS testing and evaluation. Simulation Toolkit's Network Designer offers an integrated network design studio to create a virtual multi-vendor network environment with SNMP, TL1, TFTP, FTP, Telnet and IOS manageable devices, on a single PC. The device library consists of pre-configured devices that can be used directly to create a virtual network populated with hosts, printers, pix firewall, cisco series routers/switches and cable modem devices.

With Simulation Toolkit you can create a virtual network with 50,000+ network devices on a single PC. It enables testing and evaluation of management applications for reliable functionality, scalability, performance and disaster network scenarios.

SNMP Network Simulator, TL1 Network Simulator

AdventNet Simulation Toolkit Applications

Development of Network Manager Application:

Network management application developers need to test their design during each stage of their development with the required devices and ensure that their application will adequately communicate with and manage the network devices.

Simulation Toolkit simulates real devices by exporting MIB object values but without the real device. The network management application interacts with the simulated device just as it would with real-world devices. To experiment with changes in the device values, any variation on this simulation can be easily created by configuring MIB values, simulation types and behavior scripts. This enables developers to develop their applications in parallel with agent development through simulation of device prototypes.

SNMP Agent Values

Simulation Toolkit enables simulation of thousands of agents on a single PC, enabling simulation of large networks with different device types. This results in a shortened development time, reduced product development costs and an efficient network management software.

Testing Manager Application:

The manager application needs to be tested for fault management, performance management, scalability and handling disaster network scenarios. With Simulation Toolkit, testing can proceed faster and high quality software products can be released to customers more quickly.

The Network Simulator is designed to provide enhanced network performance for large networks. As per the Performance Metric test taken for 50,000 nodes created for our customer test-bed, the simulator was successfully started with 50,000 nodes and the response time of 1804 ms was recorded when 250 nodes were queried simultaneously by the NMS.

3. Scalability Testing

Scalability testing helps to determine whether your management application scales with the workload growth as the managed network grew in numbers and complexity. Hence, scalability testing forms an essential part of the entire testing process of NMS. To achieve the goals of scalability testing, a unique test bed for scalability would need to be built to assure that the NMS could find the 1000s of devices typically installed across a customer’s enterprise.

With Simulation Toolkit's Network Recorder, developers and QA personnal can even record real customer networks, bringing that environment directly to the lab. The recorded network can be replayed instantly in the Network Designer, thus enabling the management applications to be tested in huge customer networks.

SNMP Network Recorder

Simulation Toolkit's Integrated Network Desiger can create a large network with multiple devices, at the shortest possible time. The Network Simulator had demonstrated support for upto 10,000 device simulation on a Windows platform and 1,00,000 device simulation on a Linux platform, providing the opportunity to create network environments that would be impractical to create in a physical lab environment.

The Network Simulator provides the facility to add devices in bulk at one shot with unique ipaddress and port number combination. With option to add devices of the same type or different type of devices at random, you can create the desired network with ease. The virtual ipaddress is dynamically configured in the system, when starting each agent instance in the network.

Simulation Toolkit's Topology Editor enables you to establish inter-connections across routers, switches and other network devices and visualize the topological relationship between the devices.

Network Topology

4. Testing Real Time and Critical Network Scenarios

Simulation Toolkit enables device configurations to be made from UI or at runtime through scripts and RMI. The devices can also be configured through FTP/TFTP and scripts can be executed on file upload/download.

Simulation Toolkit's scripting capabilities enables real time scenarios to be created easily, to replicate a real network. For example, change device values and interface status, make addition/deletion to SNMP table rows dynamically, start and shutdown devices, send a trap to NMS on the start/stop of the device, add/delete devices from network, configure and send traps in bulk for thousands of agents etc. Device values can be made to vary or remain constant based on the simulation types configured. Simulation Toolkit supports Constant, Random, Linear, Wave, Exponential and Sine Wave simulation types. The simulation scenarios can be enabled dynamically without disrupting the simulation process.

Behavior Scripts

Testing the manager application in critical network scenarios helps to determine the managers' robustness in handling disaster scenarios like network breakdown, delay in responses, agent crashes etc.

Simulation Toolkit's scripting capabilities enable simulation of critical network scenarios that are hard to reproduce in a physical lab. Behavior scripts can be configued to simulate SNMP v1, v2 error messages, runtime configurations like start/stop of individual devices, up/down of device interface, delay in responses, addition of new devices through scripts and RMI enable the management software to be validated aganist large networks with real-time crtitical scenarios.

Simulation Toolkit supports SNMP request and response PDU customization. The SNMP PDU can be customized to send garbled/invalid responses and test the manager application in handling such error responses.

Simulation of real time and complex network scenarios enables complete testing of network management applications. This enhances product quality and results in a reliable and rugged management applications.

Evaluating manager application:

Enterprises need to evaluate and finalize on the best management application that suits their needs before purchasing the same. Testing these products in real network environments will impact the real network.

With Simulation Toolkit, users can easily record their real nework and exhaustively evaluate new management products. The Jython script APIs bundled with the product can be used to evaluate the capabilities of the management products by creating "what if" scenarios, which is impossible to reproduce in a real network.

Product Demonstration:

Demonstration of the management application at customer premises or during trade shows is required to display the capabilities of the product. Simulation Toolkit helps to create different network scenarios instantly without the need for configuring and carrying of devices.

The network configurations are portable across all OS. Any network created in Simulation Toolkit can be packaged and installed in any other system where Simulation Toolkit has been installed. This enables marketing and sales to set up powerful "live" demonstrations of their network management products at trade shows or at customer premises, easily and effectively. Equipment Manufacturers can demonstrate how their hardware scales and how its management application is used. Reduced demo set up time and absence of bulky equipments results in reduced cost of sales and easy and successful demonstrations.

Customer Support:

Problem identification in complex and huge customer network is often time-consuming, complicated and involves huge expenses in the support staff having to visit the customer network to reproduce the problem.

With Simulation Toolkit , the support staff do not have to visit the customer premises for problem reproduction. Its recording tool can record the customer's network environment and reproduce the problem quickly to provide fast and efficient support. Simulation Toolkit's Network Recorder records real customer networks. The recorded network can be saved and replayed instantly in the Network Designer, thus enabling the management applications to be tested in huge customer networks.

The ability to capture information on real networked devices, enables developers and test engineers to support their customers with a higher level of efficiancy.

Efficient Training:

With Simulation Toolkit, customized simulations can be created and used to train network operators, administrators, and technicians. Efficient training results in well trained and efficient network management staff with better understanding of the network management products and protocols.

AdventNet Simulation Toolkit Product Suite

Simulation Tools:

Manager Tools

Editor Tools

Device Library

This Article has been viewed 3,244 times. (Not updated in real-time.)
No comments yet.
We want your comments! If you can read this, you don't have javascript enabled, so you can't use this comment system. Please enable javascript.