Why Test Burst

Traditional Ethernet service-activation test methodologies such as RFC 2544 focus on testing with constant bit rate traffic. Constant bit rate testing is an important step in testing Ethernet services because it allows for the measurement of throughput, frame loss, latency, and packet jitter while the network is operating in steady state for a given rate of test traffic. While testing with constant bit-rate traffic allows for the validation of important KPIs, it does not validate how well the network will perform when transporting the expected traffic patterns which will likely consist of a mix of constant bit-rate voice and video traffic and bursty data traffic. Ensuring that this bursty data traffic can pass through the network without frame loss and without impacting other services are the two goals of burst testing. Read more.