Argon Blaster delivers industry’s first flow simulator and traffic generator

UK: Argon Design, a leading developer of high-performance software applications for many core communications processors, launched the Argon Blaster, the industry’s first flow simulation solution for generating realistic, Internet scale traffic loads and applications to test networking and security equipment.  

Blaster delivers a line-rate, timing-accurate, flow-simulation application on an affordable PCIe acceleration card for use in standard x86 platforms. This enables OEMs to cost-effectively distribute a high-performance simulation and traffic generation solution throughout the engineering organization. This new approach significantly reduces development time and cost, while simultaneously increasing product quality.

Blaster is also designed for enterprise and carrier network operators for performance testing of flow-based cyber security and network analytics applications. Blaster enables network managers to verify that these systems are designed and deployed in a manner to match expected network loads.

"High-performance test traffic generation is critical to the continued development of the Vineyard NAVL DPI engine," said Josh Zieske, VP of technical operations at Vineyard Networks.  "To have any value, high performance network application testing solutions must be able to model real-world traffic scenarios accurately.  Blaster has the capabilities we need to provide this accurate network simulation so we can confidently test our products under intense network stress."

Blaster is a simple-to-use application for custom flow and packet generation that runs on standard Linux server platforms accelerated by Netronome's flow processors.  Combining a Netronome Flow Engine PCIe acceleration card with an intelligent software application from Argon Design, Blaster is capable of saturating a 10 Gbps link with application traffic with accurate, consistent, per-flow rate control for up to a million unique flows.

“Flow processing has become pervasive in cyber security, network analytics and software-defined networking designs,” said Steve Barlow, CTO at Argon Design. “As a result, new, cost effective testing and simulation tools are required to stress these products in ways not previously available.”

“Argon Design is a recognized leader in software development for engineering organizations,” said Jarrod Siket, senior VP of marketing and general manager at Netronome. “Their expertise in the complex requirements facing developers of sophisticated communications equipment makes them uniquely qualified to bring this much needed application to market.”

Blaster pricing starts at $9,999, including 12-month warranty and customer support.