Apposite’s 10Gb WAN Emulator

As large enterprises roll out long-awaited 10-gigabit infrastructures, Apposite Inc. is addressing the growing need for high-capacity WAN emulation to maximize the performance of data center networks and applications.

The new Netropy 10G2 WAN Emulator offers 40 Gbps aggregate capacity, equipping corporate IT departments, managed hosting service providers, and makers of data center network equipment and applications to simulate bi-directional 10 Gbps networks.

"We’re finally seeing enterprises upgrading their data centers and other core infrastructure to 10 Gbps and struggling to ensure that critical applications can take advantage of the additional bandwidth," says Apposite president DC Palter. "At 10 Gbps, the latency caused by placing a backup facility just a few hundred miles away can seriously impact replication times. The only way to guarantee that applications like storage, disaster recovery and high-speed file transfers will work as expected is to emulate the unique network conditions and explore options for maximizing performance."

WAN emulation enables strategic assessment of whether networks and applications are performing optimally and serves to pinpoint the factors constraining performance. Netropy network emulators simulate WAN bandwidth and the network characteristics that impact application performance: latency, packet loss, congestion, and other impairments.

Where previous Netropy devices enabled assessment of WANs linking headquarters and datacenters to branch offices around in the world, the new Netropy 10G2 specifically targets the growing need to test and optimize the performance of 10 Gbps networks and the applications driving its deployment in the enterprise.

Along with its high capacity, Apposite’s trademark ease of use and configuration flexibility facilitate modeling of performance across specific network links to inform network design, vendor selection, configuration, troubleshooting and verification of ongoing upgrades to critical applications such as:

• Storage over WAN
• Datacenter replication
• Remote backup/disaster recovery
• Cloud storage
• High-speed file transfer
• Database access and replication
• Tele-presence and IP video

"The ability to successfully test and showcase multi-gigabit per second transfer speed for Aspera software over the wide area network is critical to our business," says Michelle Munson, Aspera President and Co-founder. "Apposite’s Netropy meets our stringent requirements for performance and precision in WAN emulation, both in the lab and in customer-facing presentations."

Introducing an aggregate capacity of 40 Gbps, the new Netropy 10G2 can simulate two separate 10 Gbps full-duplex links, or alternatively, support assessment of twenty 1 Gbps links using a single emulator. Each device features two emulation engines that can each filter packets onto up to 15 distinct virtual WAN links, making it easy to evaluate performance across various segments of large global networks. Advanced modeling capabilities include the ability to record peak or stress conditions on a specific link and apply them to ‘what if?’ scenario testing in a lab environment.

With four dual-rate 1/10 Gbps SFP+ interfaces making it easy to install in any 1 or 10 Gbps network, the next-generation Netropy 10G2 gives enterprises a cost-effective, future-proof investment in emulation to support future migration to 10 Gbps links.