Spirent TestCentre goes wireless

Spirent Communications' TestCentre network tester has gone wireless with the addition of WLAN (wireless local-area network) test capabilities. The WLAN capability lets you emulate entire WLANs for parameters such as throughput, security, timing, drop and re-association, rate vs. range, and other parameters.

Available with one or two wireless LAN interface cards, the TestCentre can test 2.4GHz and 5GHz APs (access points), network controllers, gateways, and entire WLAN ecosystems. You can use it to generate traffic and to analyse traffic for the network for device under test.

Test parameters include:

• Link State

• Packets Sent

• Signature Valid Packets Received

• Bytes Sent and Received

• Fragments Received

• Bad Sequence Errors

• Bad Payload Checksum

• Ping requests and replies

• Checksum errors

• IP Multicast packets

• Sent/Received IP Packets

Figure 1: The TestCentre supports 256 802.11a/b/g/ac clients using Spirent's 802.11AC NIC.

The WLAN TestCentre supports wireless networks for testing for IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n/ac at protocol layers 2 through 7. That includes upper-level protocols such as DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) and TCP (Transmission-Control Protocol) as well as testing for security protocols such as WEP-64, WEP-128, WEP-152, and WEP-256, TKIP (Temporal Key Integrity Protocol) (WPA), and AES-CCMP (WPA2).

The WLAN TestCentre connects to your network where you can control it using Spirent's TestCentre software. The maximum number of clients that the TestCentre can emulate depends on the NIC (network interface card) or cards in the system. For example, it can support 256 802.11a/b/g/ac clients using Spirent's 802.11AC NIC. Using the 802.11AC NIC, TestCentre can support up to 128 802.11a/b/g/ac and up to 400 802.11a/b/g clents. It also supports MIMO (multiple input, multiple output) 1 x 1, 2 x 2, and 3 x 3 configurations.