Spirent Communications, the leading provider of testing solutions for communications networks, services and devices, along with network equipment vendor, Huawei and independent testing lab, European Advanced Networking Test Center (EANTC) to conduct a large scale, high density 6.4 terabit/second core router test. This test verified the performance, scalability and resiliency of Huawei’s NetEngine 5000E core router with a fully loaded 400 GbE line card.

The objective of the test was to validate that Huawei’s core router meets the exploding mobile data traffic requirements of Tier 1 service provider backbone networks. The test cases were created by experienced project managers from EANTC and included four main areas: line card and chassis forwarding performance, router resiliency, service functionality testing and power consumption. The NE5000E was fully loaded with 400G line cards and contained 32 100GbE, 10 40GbE, and 280 10GbE ports. Testing successfully forwarded 125 Trillion packets and the product’s power consumption was as low as 8106 Watts. Reliability testing validated non-stop routing (NSR). The testing results also showed that NE5000E can realize BGP convergence time 130,000 routes/s, which is three times faster than the industry average.

The test bed leveraged Spirent’s high density 100G test modules with the industry’s first and only CFP2 optical transceiver support. The Spirent TestCenter software along with SPT-N11U chassis provided the test capabilities needed to configure and run high scale emulation and packet forwarding performance tests. With support for unprecedented realism through  topology emulation and multi-protocol scale testing, Spirent TestCenter’s configuration tools and intelligent real time analysis helped complete the test.

“Spirent provided multiple of its latest generation SPT-N11U platforms with high density 100G test modules and performed very well in this test,” said Marvin Liu, Project Manager of Huawei. “While conducting the test of NetEngine 5000E Core router, Spirent’s solution allowed us to plan, execute test cases and monitor the result more efficiently and more effectively in this productive test environment.”

“Verifying core router performance at 100G speeds is critical for Tier 1 service providers and Huawei successfully passed all 19 test cases, which shows its leadership in the 400G era,” said CarstenRossenhövel, managing director, EANTC. “Spirent’s solutions help us accurately validate the Huawei’s performance, scale and redundancy claims.”

“The explosion of traffic on the backbone networks is driving service providers to deploy super-efficient core routers that deliver high bandwidth and density with the lowest power consumption,” said Angus Robertson, Vice President of Marketing, Networks and Applications Segment at Spirent Communications.