The Three Rs for Network Device Testing & Troubleshooting: Record, Replay, Replicate (Part 1 of 4)
Part one of a four part Use Case series
How do you increase your chances of replicating customer issues in your lab? Just remember the Three Rs!
There’s no other product like SYNESIS that can capture at 100G with no packet loss. We just made it better by adding Packet Replayer! SYNESIS is now a perfect tool for R&D,QA, and Field Service teams at network equipment manufacturers where being able to record and use data for customer issue replication and resolution regression critical.
A major challenge faced by Field Service,R&D, and QA teams is replicating issues reported by their customers. These teams just aren’t able to record the data with traditional network recorders due to today’s high traffic rates seen at packet capture points. Also, it’s just unfeasible to deploy a network recorder, often involving large appliances requiring too much rack space, high power requirements, and long setup time.
SYNESIS solves this challenge by being the only portable network recorder capable of continuous capture , even up to 100Gbps. In addition, teams are now able to use that data to solve their customer issues using what we call the Three Rs: RECORD,REPLAY,REPLICATE
RECORD network traffic that trigger your customer’s network and/or application issues. Real production traffic is the most realistic data set you can use for troubleshooting and testing. Then REPLAY that data in your test environment to REPLICATE your customer network and/or application issues.
Let’s take a look at our first use case.
Use Case 1: Replicating customer issues in the lab
Network vendor equipment sometimes experience failures once deployed at customer sites causing grief for both vendor and customer. These failures are typically caused by “certain traffic conditions”. The vendor teams (Field Support,R&D,QA) then try to replicate the same failures using synthetic traffic in their own test lab, usually without success. What will increase the issue replication success rate? Real world data, their customer’s data! Recording real production data onsite and using that same date in the company controlled test lab will greatly enhance the chances of replicating customer issues. Using our 3R method…
RECORD – Capture production data into SYNESIS’ high capacity storage. Even if line rates reach 100Gbps, no packet lost will occur, including microburst conditions. When the suspect network equipment fails, the offending traffic is saved in storage.
REPLAY to REPLICATE – Bring SYNESIS with the storage traffic data back into the company lab where matching equipment is available for problem replication lab. Replay the same data at the same packet rate and timing, up to 10Gbps. Your chances of reproducing the problem is greatly increased. The same data may also be replayed for confirming code fixes and for regression testing.
