TEAM Zarate Tarrani Notes From the Field

Fair is Fair. I provided security tools in my 3 and 4 March entries in Postcards from the Revolution. I'm going to provide advanced testing tools here to even things out. These tools will be of value to performance and capacity planners, as well as members of QA teams involved in conformance testing.

Network Test Tools and Simulators. The tools listed below are free, but you will be required to fill out a request form before you can download them. The form is used for internal project justification purposes. After you complete the request form(s) you will be immediately given a link to download the tool. Also note that many of these tools are provided as source code (usually C or C++).

• ABRtest, an implementation tool for conformance testing the ATM ABR Service Rate Control.
• PNNItest, for Private Network-Network Interface (PNNI) Routing Interoperability Tests.
• APROPS, a Private Network-Network Interface (PNNI) Simulator.
• ATM/HFC Network Simulator.
• NISTnet, which is a general-purpose tool for emulating performance dynamics in IP networks. The tool is designed to allow controlled, reproducible experiments with network performance sensitive/adaptive applications and control protocols in a simple laboratory setting.
• Integrated Services Protocol Instrument. ISPI is an interactive, integrated tool for measuring the performance of quality of service (QoS) sensitive data streams while conducting experiments with emerging Internet resource reservation protocols and real-time network services.
• IP Security Web Based Interoperability Tester.

Integration Tool. WebSubmit is a Web-based utility providing access to applications on a collection of heterogeneous computing resources. Its goal is to make it easy to use computing resources via the Web without requiring knowledge of the specifics of unfamiliar operating systems and dynamic application environments. Users can effectively log into distinct computing environments and perform tasks without needing a detailed knowledge of their operating environment.

End Note. Outsourced software development is a reality. I am not going to open Pandora's Box by expressing my opinions on the problems in the US software industry, but am going to share a whitepaper I found titled, Applying Software Quality Assurance to Outsourced Software Development.