John Scano
Software Development Manager
Juniper Networks, Inc

I am responsible for the development and testing of the management subsystems for Juniper Network’s E-Series family of routers. An E-Series router is a layer 3 device built on top of a rich set of interface types, that combines wire speed forwarding with service enabling features such as QoS, policy management, Layer 2 and 3 tunneling and PPP/DHCP - to name just a few. Carriers and service providers use the extensive features of this device to design and offer billable services. For example, the E-Series router can be deployed to offer basic broad band or leased line aggregation, or value added services such as tier Internet access, VOIP, VOD and VPNs. The large and growing features translate into requirement for a high quality management subsystem, especially when you consider that these services are billed and that customers generally require accurate billing information.

The management subsystems are primarily built on top of SNMPv1/v2c and V3. When we originally developed the management subsystems, all of our testing was done using manual techniques. This approach was quickly abandoned because it didn’t scale, provided no regression capability and lead to inefficiencies within our organization. As a result, we searched for a commercial tool that would address our process problem.

We discovered a number of shareware MIB browsers and command line tools, but none of these provided SNMPv3 testing capability, which was crucial to our security conscious, customer base. Eventually we converged on AdventNet and SilverCreek. We started down the path with AdventNet, but it was SilverCreek that we formally chose because the AdventNet SNMPv3 test code had numerous implementation problems and the customer support was not great. We also found that the tests coverage was not comprehensive. We began using SilverCreek within the development organization and we found it to be quick to produce test results, it was easily extensible to provide proprietary test coverage, and IWL provided us with responsive customer support.