Maxwell, and its new portable sibling Mini Maxwell, are targeted primarily to networking personnel (especially engineers and/or trainers) and enable the emulation of network traffic with "real world" conditions such as packet loss, delay, or re-ordering. Such traffic can be fed into specific devices, application, or the network in general to observe the results of the "impaired" traffic on the targeted devices or applications. As such, the product could be used by network engineers looking to test new applications and devices against real-world traffic conditions, or trainers/developers who wish to demonstrate the results of certain conditions or validate their product's ability to withstand such conditions.

Each of the devices include three Ethernet ports (10/100/1000 in Maxwell, 10/100 in Mini Maxwell); a single port for management control that is bound to an IP stack (including its own IP address), and two ports that handle the inbound/outbound traffic that will be fed through the emulator. The inbound/outbound ports, in particular, operate as somewhat of a Layer 2 bridge, and are therefore invisible to and do not require configurations of the devices on either side of the emulator.

Traffic that arrives in one side of the device can be analyzed and selectively "impaired" before being delivered out the other side of the device. As such, real-world scenarios such as lost or dropped packets, re-ordered packets, duplicated packets, or delayed packets can all be simulated by the device.

In the new Mini Maxwell, which is a portable netem-based device measuring about 6" x 6" x 1", the above whole-packet level modifications can be applied to specific filtered traffic "bands;" up to 5 of which can be defined by the administrator. Traffic can be filtered by such metrics as source and destination address, source and destination Layer 3 port, protocol, bit pattern, and MAC address, among others. Users can additionally define their own custom packet filters.

The above mentioned impairments (delay, loss, duplicate, etc.) can be defined and applied to traffic separately by band. Additionally, separate impairments can be defined for both directions of the traffic; i.e., different impairments can be applied to upstream traffic than to downstream. Management of the filters and defined impairments is via a Web GUI; changes to definitions take effect immediately without requiring a restart of the device.

For more rigorous testing needs, Mini Maxwell's big brother, Maxwell, is a 1U box with 10/100/1000 ports. Maxwell expands the ability to impair packets beyond the standard drop/loss etc. features (which can be assigned by network flow, and can additionally support custom, coupled, or combined trigger definitions) to include the ability to actually modify the traffic at the protocol or packet content (payload) level; introducing protocol anomalies such as missing/incorrectly set bits or corrupted data. Maxwell supports multiple concurrent network flows, and can be managed by a Web GUI or script API. Additionally, a plug-in facility allows the administrator to create custom impairments in C/C++ that can be applied to the traffic (the vendor notes that sample templates are included).

Maxwell and Mini Maxwell are available now. Mini Maxwell pricing is set at $1,499.

Visit the InterWorking Web site for further information.