Midnight Networks announces avalanche network emulation/stress testing tool; "Test Network in a Box" emulates real-world networks, automatically.

WALTHAM, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 20, 1996-- Midnight Networks announced today the availability of a new network emulation product for stress testing.

This product, named Avalanche, validates the behavior of network devices, systems, and services by stress testing them in a user-controlled emulation of a real-world enterprise network.

Avalanche is a multi-port, multi-protocol tool that emulates the behavior of hundreds or thousands of network devices as specified by the user, sending packets appropriate to those devices and reacting to the packets they receive. Avalanche allows network managers to emulate their own networks during product evaluations to see how well different products would work on their networks. Network managers can also use Avalanche to determine what impact changes to their networks would have on the products and systems that make up the network. Avalanche is a valuable tool for network vendors and VARs as well, indicating, for example, whether a particular product or system would be effective on a customer's network.

Key features of Avalanche include:

-- Multi-port, multi-protocol testing: Release 1.0 of Avalanche supports eight Ethernet ports and emulates three widely-used routing protocols: IP RIP (versions 1 and 2), IPX (RIP and SAP), and AppleTalk (RTMP and ZIP). Additional media types and networking protocols will be supported in future releases.

-- Flexible, realistic emulation: Users can choose to emulate different types of network scenarios -- hypothetical scenarios they create themselves, scenarios created by Avalanche's profiling tool (see below), or pre-written scenarios provided by Midnight Networks such as the Massive Multi-Protocol Network scenario included with Release 1.0. During emulation, Avalanche sends packets appropriate to the emulated devices in the scenario, intelligently interacting with the device or system under test over multiple interfaces, rather than just sending identical packets or blindly replaying the same sequence of captured packets over and over.

-- Validation of the device/system under test: While a network scenario is being run, Avalanche monitors and analyzes the responses from the device(s) or system under test and periodically queries it to see how well it is handling the traffic. Statistics are displayed and updated continuously that show the user how the device/system under test is behaving.

-- Real-world scenario creation through profiling production networks: Avalanche's profiling function monitors the traffic on existing networks and creates scenarios based on the devices and routes found on the networks. This function can be used to recreate real-world networks somewhere else -- in a network manager's or vendor's test lab, for example. It allows a user to determine how a device or system would hold up to a network's traffic without having to use the network for "live" testing.

-- GUI and command-line interfaces: Users can choose a graphical user interface to create profiles or run emulations, or they can use a command-line interface. The command-line interface enables Avalanche to be integrated with freely available automation tools such as perl and expect, or with commercial test harnesses.

-- Avalanche's Emulation Answers Network Operation and Capacity Questions --

"Network managers spend a lot of time, and therefore money, testing new router software releases before actually deploying them," states Kathryn Korostoff, president of Sage Research Inc. in Natick, Mass. "With Avalanche, they can emulate the network to test the new release quickly and without any risk to the actual network."

Peter H. Schmidt, co-founder of Midnight Networks, adds, "Avalanche is a proactive tool that lets network managers and vendors answer what-if questions: 'Can my backbone handle four times as many segments attached to it? Will the latest router software survive our customer's network? Will this network design work as well with actual equipment as it does on paper?' Analyzers and management stations are reactive -- they are indispensable when you have a problem, but they aren't tailored to helping you avoid problems from the start. Simulation tools are increasingly essential to the design of second-generation networks, but even a valid mathematical model of a router can't tell you if a bug has crept in along with the latest features. Avalanche can."

-- Pricing and Specifications --

The price of an Avalanche system is $30,000. Avalanche's hardware platform is a custom-built Pentium-based workstation containing 16 megabytes of memory. Protocols supported in Release 1.0 include IP RIP (versions 1 and 2), IPX (RIP and SAP), and AppleTalk (RTMP and ZIP).

Midnight Networks, a division of Teradyne Inc. of Boston, provides software for network product development and network administration. The company also offers customized software development services to networking vendors and users. Midnight Networks' products include Avalanche, a network emulation product for stress testing, ANVL, an automated system for validating protocol interoperability in network devices, and Recon/Map, an intelligent network management tool for TCP/IP-based networks. The company can be reached via phone at 617/890-1001 or via email at [e-mail]. Information about Midnight Networks can also be obtained from its Web site at http://www.midnight.com.

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Avalanche, ANVL and Recon/Map are trademarks of Midnight Networks. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

CONTACT: Midnight Networks

Hollie Schmidt, 617/890-1001

[e-mail]