Overview… RFC 2544
Xena provides a script-based implementation of the RFC 2544 test suite framework, which performs four kinds of tests for a range of packet rates and packet lengths across a collection of ports.
It uses Microsoft Excel as the scripting platform and Visual Basic as the scripting language. Hence it is just a collection of spreadsheets inside a single Excel workbook:
You use it by filling in various cells with a light-gray background and clicking on some buttons on the spreadsheets.
On the “Connect” sheet you first enter the IP address of the chassis to use for the test, and which ports to use:
You then click the “CONNECT” button, which reserves the ports and downloads some port-level property values that you can modify if needed.
You then proceed through a few more sheets to fully define the test scenario, for instance setting the rate/size parameters on the “TestCfg” sheet:
As you run each of the THROUGHPUT, LOSS, LATENCY, and BACK-TO-BACK tests, they will provide detailed results for each test case:
Once the tests are concluded, a numerical summary is provided on the “Reports” sheet, and a grahical summary as well on the “Charts” sheet:
The spreadsheets can be customized at will, for instance by adding more extensive reporting using all the available features of Excel. The script code can also be inspected and modified.