Interview

Network simulation

Growing network loads are leading to crashes which, in turn, are compelling organizations to resort to network simulation before going live. Pankaj Shah, CEO, Gambit Communications in conversation with Kushal Shah.

Pankaj Shah

Simulating a network is similar to using a flight simulator. Pilots, before flying, are tested and trained on simulators; in the same way network engineers before starting to deploy software and applications and devices try them out on a simulator. One can simulate an entire network with thousands of network devices and test these devices as well as train staff before the actual deployment. This is all simulation and does not include real-time network administration. In this scenario, it does not simulate the eclectic load but rather it simulates network traffic. If you trying to deploy a device or software application on a network and you do not know how it will perform under particular conditions, you can take the help of network simulators. Especially for banks it is critical to test a network as even two seconds of downtime can cost a lot which is why they have to be very careful in deploying anything on the network.

MIMIC simulator suite offering

This tool of ours comes with a recording option which you can point to the current network and it will record the entire network and then simulate it. Testing and training on MIMIC are quite realistic. Once it is simulated, we can create many adverse conditions. We can remove a router, we can increase the traffic and under such conditions check the network response and learn from that. If there is a power out on one site, then all the load is shifted from one center to the other and if the operator is trained on this software, he will not have any difficulty and be able to handle it. The solution doesn’t solve a problem, it simulates a problem which can occur on a live network.

Technology and vendor support

Basically all networking devices run a SNMP agent which has all the information about the device starting from its interface, its name and all other possible characteristics. Apart from general information, it can also give detailed information about traffic and error conditions. Management software typically connects to the agent and then we simulate the agent and in turn simulate the devices. We support all the possible vendors in the library. If it is a new vendor, we provide a compiler and recorder using which any device can be simulated by them without our support. In terms of scalability, we support 20,000 devices on one workstation. These workstations need not be high-end machines. If people want 250 devices, a normal laptop can handle the load. Our solution is platform independent and can simulate any mix of devices. HP, Cisco, Dell and Alcatel-Lucent are some of our global partners and in India, we have Reliance as our biggest customer.

Growth and road ahead

Globally any company which has a big network has a test lab and that is where our product fits in. No one wants to start a network without simulating it first. All the MNCs are sending their application development to India and have R&D labs here. We target all companies from the US or UK having branches in India. If I am to discuss India, it’s growing quite a lot and becoming a prime location for our product sales. In terms of percentage we have grown from zero when we had started to 10 to 20 percent of our revenue. Going ahead we would like to exploit opportunities in server and storage management.

Pricing and SMB focus

Costing varies; if you have 250 devices, it will cost $10,000 or around $40 per device. We have various packages ranging from one to 20,000 devices which can cater to a wide range of clients including SMBs. We have the MIMIC virtual lab which has many ready simulated networks which are associated with tests. It’s a low cost package that cannot be customized which can work well for SMBs.

kushal.shah@expressindia.com