Glossary of Terms

Blocks Typology

A topology where each port is associated with either the EAST or the WEST group. Each port in the EAST group will then communicate with all ports in the WEST group, and vice versa. There are thus no direct relation between ports like there are for the Pairs topology. The transmit and receive roles of the ports are determined by the Direction setting.

Direction

Denotes the direction of the traffic flows in relation to the group definitions. The direction can be either unidirectional or bidirectional. Unidirectional flows can be either EAST-to-WEST or WEST-to-EAST.

DUT

Device Under Test

FDV

Frame Delay Variance

FTD

Frame Transfer Delay

Iteration

Each test-type can be configured to repeat the test runs associated with the test-type a number of times. Each of these additional runs is called an iteration.

Mesh Typology

A topology where all ports communicate with each other. The direction will always be bidirectional and the EAST/WEST group attribute is not used.

MPLS

Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) is a routing technique in telecommunications networks that directs data from one node to the next based on labels rather than network addresses.

Pair Typology

A topology where each port is associated with exactly one other peer port. The ports must be associated with opposing EAST/WEST groups. A test configuration can contain several port pairs. The transmit and receive roles of the two ports are determined by the Direction setting.

PON

A passive optical network (PON) is a fiber-optic telecommunications network that uses only unpowered devices to carry signals, as opposed to electronic equipment.

Run

Run A “test run” (or simply “run”) denotes the part of the test configuration that is associated with a single test-type and a single packet size. This concept is used for the purpose of progress reporting. A test configuration that specifies the use of e.g. 5 packet sizes and has enabled 3 of the possible 4 test-types will thus consist of 5*3 = 15 runs.

Test Type

Denotes one of the the four types of tests according to RFC 2544: Throughput, Latency (and Jitter), Loss, and Back-to-Back (a.k.a. Burst).

TG

Traffic Generation

TID

Test payload identifier

TPLD

Test payload

Trial

A “trial” denotes a single execution of an iteration.

VLAN

Virtual local area network (VLAN) is any broadcast domain that is partitioned and isolated in a computer network at the data link layer (OSI layer 2).