Revision 6-public

Preview:

StreamSurge™Network Test Card & Appliance

Preliminary product information subject to change

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• Network testing appliances offer a high degree of functionality but the cost is too high for many potential users.

• To fill this gap, software-only test solutions are emerging that leverage unique timing features found in Intel’s newer NIC chips. That software uses DPDK software to access the Intel chip’s timing features.

Intel NICs with DPDK are available up to 100 GbE today but are challenged as test platforms above 10 GbE

Cost-Optimized Testing Tier Emerging

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• TRex from Ciscohttps://trex-tgn.cisco.com/

• MoonGen from Technische Universität Münchenhttp://scholzd.github.io/MoonGen/index.html

• Pktgen-DPDK from Intelhttp://pktgen.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

• The above are all open source. Proprietary solutions are also emerging.

DPDK-Based Network Test Software

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• Software solutions are great for protocol testing at any bandwidth and load testing at 10 GbE.

• Unfortunately, it is very difficult for an Intel NIC to perform load testing using small packets even at 25 GbE, never mind100 GbE.

• The solution is bigger buffers inside a specialized NIC that can drive up to 400 GbE load testing.

Higher Bandwidths

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1. A large buffer, FPGA-based, network adapter for OEM and VAR customers Works today as 4 by 100 GbE with our own command-line PCAP play and

record tools Engaged in conversations with the DPDK open source community to support

our boards to enable load testing using their more sophisticated software

2. The board above installed in a 1U server box and sold to end-users

Two BittWare Offerings

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100 GbE MAC

FPGA DRAM Buffer

DPDK Data

Mover

FPGA - One of four identical pipelines

QSFP Cage

Host DPDK Queue

Pair

Software-based Network Test Application

• To DPDK applications looks like a normal network card, soon with timestamps.• Adds ability to change interframe gap (IFG) on transmit, even down to “illegally” small gaps.

Intel NICs only offer less flexible constant bit rate (CBR) controls.• Adds ability to pause transmit while the transmit buffer fills up.• Adds ability to loop the transmit buffer for infinitely long load tests.

Full duplex except during load testing. For load testing you need to select a single direction per port

For load testing the software application fills this large buffer and then the hardware bursts it out

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Records but not a Recorder

• StreamSurge IP offers a burst recording mode so that a software application can measure drops, latency and jitter under load.

• What about continuous recording? With different IP loaded, the same FPGA card can move a continuous 100 GbE

stream into host memory without drops. However, that requires a cable that consumes a second PCIe slot (sends packets into two different motherboard sockets at the same time). DPDK supports this but the StreamSurge IP does not.

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Latency & Jitter

• Just loop the transmit path back into one of the card’s receive paths and watch the packet serial numbers (for drops) and receive timestamps (for latency and jitter).

• The StreamSurge IP does not provide transmit timestamps on every packet (just on receive). However, a pending IP revision will share the timestamp for the first packet out of the transmit burst buffer. Knowing the IFG used, the rest of the packet transmit times are easily calculated in software.

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• The FPGA-based buffers can each sustain 100 Gbit without drops only in one direction at a time.

• There are four 100 GbE ports on the card. By default, we dedicate two of the ports to transmit and two ports to receive. Other configurations are possible (for example, 1 by 400 GbE or 4 by 25 GbE).

Buffer Bandwidth

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• We sell complete systems to end users. This provides the best out-of-box experience as BittWare can optimize slot placement, BIOS configuration, OS release number, etc.

• StreamSurge is a 1U box with a liquid cooled, Intel E5 v4 single socket server inside. That server hosts the FPGA-based network adapter.

Systems for End Users

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• We sell just the StreamSurge boards in volume to VARs and OEMs to incorporate into their own appliances.

• The list price for a pre-programmed board depends upon the memory required (16, 32, or 64 GB).

Boards for VARs and OEMs

BittWare’s XUPP3RPCIe Board

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• Contact BittWare sales www.bittware.net

Pricing and Availability