CALABASAS, Calif. -- Ixia (Nasdaq: XXIA), a leading provider of high-speed, network performance analysis systems, announced today the availability of a suite of IPSEC test tools designed to help improve the quality and accelerate the time to market of secure networking equipment, as well as to aid carriers in the design and rollout of managed Virtual Private Networks, and validate the interoperability and performance of secure enterprise networks.

Network security has become increasingly important as the Internet has evolved into a mission-critical resource for enterprises and the government. The publication of security breaches in the media and the high consequences for businesses has driven the adoption of IPSEC as the premier tunneling and encryption technology for secure data transfers. Ixia has responded to the challenge of developing and deploying secure IPSEC networks with industry leading test tools that leverage the company's award-winning Ethernet traffic generators and Real World Traffic Software Suite to deliver new capabilities that do not exist elsewhere.

Ixia's Automated Network Validation Library (ANVL) is the industry standard for protocol conformance testing. Ixia has enhanced ANVL's IPSEC test suite with over 500 test cases for AH, ESP, and IKE. Manufacturers of IPSEC-enabled devices use ANVL to validate conformance to relevant RFCs, while carriers and enterprises use ANVL to help ensure RFC compliance as well as compatibility in multi-vendor networks. Testing all devices with ANVL can speed the rollout of IPSEC-enabled networks as well as aid in troubleshooting when new devices are added to the topology. ANVL IPSEC can be run on a standalone Linux PC, or the ANVL test traffic can be sent through Ixia's line of Ethernet traffic generators, enabling IPSEC conformance testing on 10 Gigabit Ethernet interfaces.

Ixia's second unique capability enables Chariot test traffic to be carried over IPSEC tunnels created using the company's IxVPN IPSEC performance test suite. IxVPN automatically creates thousands of IPSEC tunnels, allowing critical performance metrics such as encryption latency, decryption latency, throughput, tunnel setup rates, and tunnel capacity to be obtained. By using IxVPN, manufacturers can stress test their devices during engineering and quality assurance. Likewise, carriers and enterprises can utilize IxVPN for pre-deployment testing to validate manufacturer's performance claims and overall network performance.

Once IxVPN has established IPSEC tunnels throughout a device or network, the Chariot software mimics the traffic patterns of over 125 popular enterprise applications. This gives a definitive assessment of how the adoption of IPSEC will affect mission-critical applications. Until now, IPSEC testing could only be achieved with "stateless" layer 2 and layer 3 traffic, which gives no indication of application-layer performance.

"Ixia is committed to helping develop and deploy secure IPSEC networks", said Sunil Kalidindi, Security Product Manager for Ixia. "By offering conformance and performance testing in one solution, as well as making it easy to assess the Real World effect of IPSEC on application performance, we can help solve what until now have been unanswered questions about IPSEC implementations."

With this solution set, Ixia is responding to the needs of equipment manufacturers, carriers, and enterprises alike to develop and deploy secure networking equipment and services. Recognizing the need for secure network implementations, Ixia is continuing advanced development efforts on security-related testing technologies.

Ixia