Abstract

Spirent Communications commissioned The Tolly Group to evaluate the scalability produced by clustering its Avalanche 2200 and Reflector 2200, a pair of network capacity assessment tools for testing Layer 4 to Layer 7 traffic. The Avalanche 2200 is designed to stress network infrastructures by emulating Web clients and issuing a variety of client requests. The Reflector 2200 is a rack-mountable appliance that realistically simulates the behavior of large Web, application, and database servers, and it ‘responds’ to client requests.

The Tolly Group examined the impact of clustering four, and sometimes five, pairs of Avalanche/Reflectors to drive a high-end Layer 4-7 switch to peak levels – in this case a Foundry Networks ServerIron 400. Tests were conducted during September 2003 at The Tolly Group’s lab in Boca Raton, FL.