GL Announces PacketExpert - A Wirespeed Ethernet/Packet Tester

PacketExpert is a quad port wirespeed Ethernet/Packet Tester. It supports 4 Gigabit Ethernet ports and connects to the PC through a USB 2.0 interface. Each GigE port provides independent Ethernet/IP testing at wirespeed for applications such as BERT, RFC 2544, and many more.

PacketExpert truly takes confusion out of Ethernet testing at all protocol layers - from raw Ethernet to IP/UDP packets. It can be used as a general purpose Ethernet performance analysis for 10/100 Mbps or 1 Gbps Ethernet local area networks. Two of the 4 ports have both Electrical and Optical interfaces, enabling testing on optical fiber links also.

A BERT application measures Bit Error Rate on Raw unframed Ethernet (Layer1), framed Ethernet (Layer2), IP and UDP data streams. Various PRBS patterns such as 29-1, 211-1, 215-1, 220-1, 223-1, 229-1, 231-1 are supported. Also All Ones, All Zeroes, Alternate Ones and Zeroes patterns are provided as well as user-defined test patterns ranging from 1 bit to 32 bits. PacketExpert supports user-defined options to configure Ethernet/IP/UDP header parameters, including VLAN, Frame Size, and Rate.

Optional sequence number insertion allows measuring out-of-sequence packets. Detailed BERT statistics like the Bit Error Count, Bit Error Rate, Bit Error Seconds etc., are provided. Bit Error Count is displayed in both Tabular and Graphical formats.

Per RFC 2544 specifications, PacketExpert supports Throughput, Latency, Frame Loss Rate, and Back-to-Back tests. It includes various parameter configurations such as Test Selection, Frame Sizes, Unidirectional/Bidirectional, Number of trials, Trial Duration, and many more. User-defined options to configure various packet header parameters, like MAC addresses, IP addresses, UDP ports etc. Results are displayed in both tabular as well as graph format.