Ixia Touts 10-Gig Test

GENEVA -- Ixia (Nasdaq: XXIA), a leading, global provider of high performance IP network testing solutions, today announced that CERN, SURFnet, the University of Amsterdam and Carleton University selected Ixia equipment to successfully validate the world's first transcontinental 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GE)WAN PHY network.

The network consists of two major components: a SURFnet OC-192 lambda between Geneva and the StarLight facility in Chicago via Amsterdam, and another OC-192 lambda from StarLight and Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, provided by CANARIE, Canada's not-for-profit Internet organization dedicated to the development of next generation networks, and Optical Regional Advanced Network of Ontario (ORANO), a not-for-profit organization, governed by a Board of Directors that includes leaders from the fields of education, research and business. The test utilized Ixia's extensive 10GE WAN PHY traffic generation and analysis capability to verify the full wire-speed 10GE performance of this transcontinental network. The Ixia test equipment was deployed at the endpoints of the 10GE link in Ottawa and Geneva. The sophisticated performance requirements of this network validation also relied on the IXIA 100's traffic generation and analyzer with its unique integrated Global Positioning System (GPS) capability, which made it possible to establish real-time, sub-microsecond precision one-way latency measurements from end to end.

"The Ixia test gear enabled us to saturate the 10 Gigabit Ethernet connection. This would have been impossible by only using PCs," said Catalin Meirosu, of CERN. "The possibility of synchronizing via GPS units located thousands of kilometers away and the accuracy of the one-way latency computation was key to our tests. We were impressed by the Ixia hardware and software stability during the one month of practically continuous operation within the testbed. In addition, the Ixia control software is easy to use, and we appreciate the features in the Ixia test management interface, IxExplorer, that enabled us to adjust the traffic rate without stopping the ongoing test," concluded Meirosu.

The results of this landmark test are an important milestone in exploring the high-speed distribution of data from CERN's new particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider, scheduled to become operational in 2007. Once complete, CERN's Grid computing technology will involve the collection of millions of gigabytes of data per year to be used by physicists in hundreds of institutions located around the world.

Ixia

CERN