Alternatives to IXIA for Traffic Generation

[Lithium381]

I'm looking for a less expensive option for traffic generation and wondering if you've had experience. A small appliance would be preferred but even an application that runs on linux would be something I could live with. I've seen BreakingPoint and Ixia, but those are out of my price range by a LONG shot. This will be for just raw packet production for throughput numbers and firewall testing (mostly L3 and L4)

 

[imagoon]

iperf is commonly used for that kind of testing.

 

[Lithium381]

iperf is commonly used for that kind of testing.

How much horsepower would i need under the hood to push 1gbps+ and ideally 10gbps off of a single box?

 

[drebo]

iperf is great for testing raw throughput, but isn't really extendable enough to test things like CPS or max number of flows.

That said, iperf is probably a good starting point. Any typical workstation should be able to handle over 1gbps, probably close to 10gbps. The bigger issue will be getting the 10gbps NICs.

 

[bwolmarans]

Spirent has a virtual machine - allows you to create the same kind of traffic that you can on a physical spirent box, obviously traffic rates are different. I've seen close to 10G on it.

 

[stevech]

I've used this... it's good
http://www.zti-telecom.com/EN/LanTrafficV2.html