Spirent Communications has announced the OFELIA (OpenFlow in Europe: Linking Infrastructure and Applications) test bed is using Spirent TestCenter Virtual for Software Defined Networking (SDN)/OpenFlow testing. OFELIA is a pan-European environment for the research community that is conducting experiments in an OpenFlow-enabled wide-area network.

“Spirent’s test solution enables our researchers to take advantage of highly scalable and realistic test traffic to better understand the advantages of SDN/OpenFlow and Network Function Virtualization,” said Hagen Woesner, OFELIA Project Coordinator.

“New SDN/OpenFlow enabled architectures promise great programmability and agility across computer and network layers, but the devil is in the details in terms of understanding the performance and scalability factors of each layer and how these factors are inter-linked,” said David Hill, Vice President of EMEA at Spirent Communications. “This initiative with OFELIA is an important part of Spirent’s global contribution to SDN development, testing and standardization efforts.”

OFELIA members can initiate Spirent TestCenter Virtual inside any server located at any OFELIA island, and the points of presence in the test bed. One or more of Spirent’s virtual machines (VM) can be connected to any experimental VM or group of VMs running in the test bed to help test functionality, performance, availability, scalability and security of the VMs under test. The Spirent VMs can also be deployed locally, to test within a single island, or globally, for testing across multiple islands and locations.

Spirent TestCenter Virtual also provides an OpenFlow Test Solution to OFELIA. Each Spirent TestCenter Virtual VM is capable of emulating an OpenFlow controller and providing data flows across the OpenFlow-based infrastructure. Spirent is the first to offer the ability to benchmark flow scalability and forwarding performance across any mix of physical and virtual OpenFlow network devices using any combination of Spirent TestCenter high speed Ethernet test modules, as well as, Spirent TestCenter Virtual.

Spirent TestCenter Virtual is a software module that resides on virtual machines and servers providing unsurpassed visibility into the entire cloud and data center infrastructure. It extends and complements the capabilities of Spirent TestCenter to benchmark and optimize performance of virtual switches, network virtualization and cloud platforms such as OpenStack, VMware vCloud and CloudStack.

For more information Spirent TestCenter Virtual, visit:http://www.spirent.com/Ethernet_Testing/Platforms/Virtual