Network testing solutions provider Ixia announced that Barefoot Networks, developer of high-performance, programmable switch solutions, has chosen its 100 Gigabit Ethernet test solutions to validate the Tofino series of programmable switches launched in June last year.
Utilising the Ixia solutions, Barefoot will be able to ensure that its Tofino switches deliver the performance network operators demand, as well as test the functionality enabled by its programmable packet processing pipeline, for example new or custom protocols, in-band network telemetry and load balancing.
Barefoot's Tofino switches are based on technology that is designed to enable a fully programmable Ethernet switch that does not suffer a performance penalty to its 6.5 Tbit/s traffic processing capability. To validate the performance, scale and quality of these switches, Barefoot test engineers can use Ixia's IxNetwork and Novus 100 Gigabit Ethernet solutions to recreate real-life traffic patterns and load characteristics.
Ixia's IxNetwork offers a complete chip, device and network infrastructure test solution that can be used to validate Layer 2/3 performance, interoperability and functionality. Capable of analysing up to 4 million traffic flows simultaneously, IxNetwork is designed to provide enhanced real-time analysis and statistics. Featuring eight native QSP28 100 Gigabit Ethernet ports, the Ixia Novus load modules can generate terabytes of data to simulate real-world network traffic and Layer 2/3 protocols.
In combination, the Ixia solutions provide a test platform designed to enable full line-rate 100 Gigabit Ethernet evaluation of application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) designs, field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and hardware switch fabrics.
Recently at MWC, Barefoot Networks partnered with Netronome, a provider of intelligent networking solutions, to demonstrate a solution combining the Agilio CX SmartNIC platform and its Tofino P4-programmable switch to deliver precise, real-time network telemetry data required to detect, root-cause and resolve network problems.
The joint solution showed how a DevOps approach can be used to triangulate performance issues to VMs and NICs in servers or network switches and thereby enable the detection of poorly performing virtual network functions (VNFs) in service chains.
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- In January, Barefoot announced that it was sharing its Wedge 100B series switches, including the Wedge100BF-32X 3.2 Tbit/s 1 RU 32 x 100 Gigabit Ethernet and Wedge100BF-65X 6.5 Tbit/s 2 RU 65 x 100 Gigabit Ethernet switches that are based on its technology Tofino, with the OCP ecosystem.
