Ixia Launches L2-7/IPv6 Test Tool

CALABASAS, Calif. -- Ixia (Nasdaq: XXIA), a leading, global provider of IP network testing solutions, announced today that IxChariot 5.0, the first Ixia-developed product based on the acquisition of NetIQ’s ChariotTM source code, has been released to worldwide customers.

By seamlessly integrating Ixia’s world-class stream generation capabilities, IxChariot offers expanded IPv6 functionality, and is capable of emulating transaction rates at extremely high speeds. IxChariot integrates all current NetIQ Chariot features with a wide range of Ixia-designed functionality into a single software release for Ixia hardware, Sun Solaris, HP UX, and PC platforms.

“The IxChariot Release 5.0 gives IT departments visibility into how their networks will perform when advanced services such as multicast, video on demand, or Voice over IP are deployed,” said David Anderson, senior vice president, worldwide sales and business development operations for Ixia. “Additionally, network equipment manufacturers can now use IxChariot to emulate the transaction environment found in an enterprise network to fully verify the performance characteristics of their devices in real time.”

Network Equipment Manufacturers, ISPs, and Carriers, as well as enterprise LAN Administrators, can simultaneously generate and measure the impact of Ixia’s Layer 2/7 traffic generation concurrently with IxChariot’s VoIP, Cisco IPTV, Oracle, SAP or a wide range of customer-specific enterprise application traffic. In addition, many members of the Wi-Fi Alliance, a group formed to certify interoperability of wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) products based on IEEE 802.11 specification, extensively use this test software in their product and network operation test plans.

“IxChariot opens a new chapter for NetIQ’s proven technology,” said Chris Buerger, product manager for IxChariot for Ixia. “Ixia’s commitment to the IxChariot product family will result in the development of radically new functionality to support realistic payload-dependent tests, as well as WLAN, sophisticated VoIP functionality, and an ever-increasing library of application test scripts and Performance Endpoints to be released in 2004.”

Enterprise network managers at companies such as Merrill Lynch use the feature-rich Ixia application to stage new devices and applications and measure the impact of protocol and application changes before they are implemented. Network Equipment Manufacturers, such as Cisco Systems, NEC, and Symbol, have been working with Ixia to use application test scripts to validate and stress-test the performance of their equipment, thus proving the competitive advantage of their solutions. Network service providers like Sprint rely on Ixia to simulate the application traffic patterns across Internet and private WAN networks to differentiate the quality of their service offering. Enterprises, such as Hewlett Packard, use distributed versions of IxChariot to test the availability and performance of their network links to deliver advanced multicast services.

Developed from the de facto industry standard for simulating stateful application traffic, IxChariot is part of Ixia’s Real World Traffic Suite, which is a fully integrated test solution that simulates Internet-scale clients and servers operating within a network at the application layer. The Suite can predict device and system performance under realistic load conditions, derived from a library of security and content delivery protocols, as well as over 125 popular business applications.

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