XGT4: An industrial grade, open source tester for multi-gigabit networks
Leonardo Rezende Juracy, Felipe B. Lazzarotto, Daniel Fernando Pigatto, Ney Laert Vilar Calazans, Fernando Moraes · 2017
Network test needs grow as fast as network performance. These must be reliable, remain available without Interruption, and secure user data. Thus, they must continually be tested for service quality, based on measurements like throughput, latency, and jitter. Network and network equipment tests can rely on test software, dedicated test hardware, or in FPGA platforms. The latter offer a trade-off between software solutions limited bandwidth and high performance dedicated test equipment. This work proposes a new, industrial grade, low-cost and accurate network test solution, XGT4. XGT4 employs the NetFPGA SUME board and provides full support to the RFC2544 test benchmarks for 1G and 10G Ethernet equipment, a feature not available in other open source testers. Besides, XGT4 can be remotely operated through a dedicated web interface, and deals with multiple simultaneous 10GbE streams. Results of using XGT4 to test a commercial DUT report real-world results for all RFC2544 tests: throughput, latency, back-to-back, frame loss rate, system recovery and reset. An additional feature is timed throughput runs, to conduct bit error rate tests. The XGT4 hardware has a small area footprint, taking less than 20% of the platform FPGA.