Calnex NE-ONE Professional Network Emulator for Software Defined Test Networks

The Calnex NE-ONE Professional is a network emulator for creating software defined test networks. It recreates a wide range of realistic network types, including LAN, WAN, Internet, cloud, Wi-Fi, (A)DSL, mobile and satellite, so that application developers, software testers, network engineers and systems architects can test application performance and resilience over those networks.

Configuration is done through a pictorial web GUI in a standard browser, with predefined link types whose latency, loss and bandwidth values reflect Excellent, Good, Average and Poor link qualities. A Geolocation network latency calculator with a catalogue of over 42,000 locations calculates and inserts the base latency for a typical WAN circuit between a chosen start and end point. In Advanced Mode, an impairment library gives access to more than 50 customizable network impairments.

Scenarios and analysis

The drag-and-drop Network Scenario Builder and Player creates time-based scenarios that combine network experiences over time, with transitions such as a change from 4G to 5G or a momentary outage. Example scenarios include office, coffee shop, underground station, car journey, cruise ship and train. Built-in graphs show network performance metrics in the GUI, statistics can be exported, and packet capture files can be replayed across the test network to generate foreground or background traffic. Configuration and Test Reports document how a test network was set up and how much data crossed each link and node.

Integration and deployment

Every GUI operation has a RESTful API equivalent, and a CLI is also available, allowing test networks to be created, controlled and torn down from external tools and scripts. A multi-user design lets several users or teams operate their own test networks on the same appliance. The NE-ONE Professional can integrate with NTP, DHCP, LDAP, RADIUS and SNMP, and is offered as a desktop, half-depth rack, virtual or cloud appliance. As a sub-set of the NE-ONE Enterprise, it can be migrated to that edition.