Ixia BreakingPoint Reviews

We use Ixia BreakingPoint as a security tester oriented to test other network security solutions. Validation is needed in case of major changes in your network security infrastructure. It might be a change in your HW, major change in architecture or if you just want to be sure, that new feature will not have an effect on the performance of your security solution. We use it for IDS, anti-malware, anti-DDoS, anti-ransomware, etc.

You can use it also for testing the impact of an attack on your valid application traffic and infrastructure. Ixia BreakingPoint provides us with advanced network security features.

What Ixia BreakingPoint brings to the end customer is the use case. We use the product for the POC of security products, proof of concept. 

If you are choosing a vendor for your firewall, IPS, or Anti-DDoS solution, you can use BreakingPoint to validate the datasheets.

You can try the solution in a production environment or simulated production environment to see how your custom network perimeter performs under attack.

We had an increase in the usage of the virtual solution for hardware-based testers. We require only one person for deployment and maintenance. 

With the virtual product, you have to cooperate with the department working on your virtualization or private cloud. That's only in the initial phase.

The SSL simulation is realistic but some kinds of tests work imperfectly. The production traffic simulations are not realistic enough for some types of DDoS attacks.

The additional feature I would like to see included in the next release of the solution would be a better simulation of SSL attacks in the DDoS module.

I have had only one problem this year with the stability of the product. It was a result of the new version. Ixia BreakingPoint has very good stability overall.

For the scalability, there is a hardware product. We have a server that is not working well right now. Ixia BreakingPoint is scalable only to some point. There is a virtual version of the product which is scaled to 100s of virtual testing blades.

The performance of the product depends on how many blades you deploy. You can get very good performance for it with multiple users at the same time. 

BreakingPoint is used by our network and security engineers for our customers. It's not a full-time job. If you need the test, you can be done in half an hour.

Technical support strongly depends on what you are testing, because their knowledge of the product is very good. Their responsiveness and professionalism are good. 

If you need some technical advice with your test or with the device you are currently testing, you can have a little problem. They are responsible. It's a good service.

The initial setup of Ixia BreakingPoint is easy. With more complex scenarios, it gets increasingly complex because depends on what you are testing. 

If you only want to do baseline tests for some product traffic or a simple DDoS attack, it's straightforward and easy. 

Deployment and implementation for baseline testing are usually done in one day.

For a reseller, it's hard to calculate ROI. For customers who are using Ixia BreakingPoint for POC, they usually see ROI in six months to one year.

We have the end-user and use one virtual tester which has a one year subscription license for $25,000 US Dollars. That is the price for your private cloud or virtualization infrastructure.

We use Ixia BreakingPoint to run the virtual solution. Our customers usually have in-house private clouds. The cost is only for the subscription license.

We use multiple testers in our security portfolio. With other vendors, there is very low competition in this market sector. I have seen it all but I don't use it.

Our customers prefer Ixia BreakingPoint. There is only one major competitor.

I would recommend not to use the OpenStack solution. It's hard to implement. If you have a choice, choose VMware. 

If you want high-performance, use recommended hardware with DPDK and Intel support. Use new hardware with PCI Express 3.0/3.1. Use multiple network cards for multiple blades.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I would rate Ixia BreakingPoint a nine.

Our primary use for Ixia BreakingPoint is stress testing. We are curently evaluating SDWAN solution. Ixia BP generate traffic and is simulating around 200 users.

We didn't want to hire hundreds of people to simulate user web access. ;-)

 We bought the  BreakingPoint to take care of it.

Ixia BreakingPoint has not improved the way our organization functions. It addressed one of our main concerns which was to generate realistic web user traffic in the scope of our specific use case.

The most valuable feature is Layer 7 traffic generation such as Facebook, Netflix, WhatsApp...

The quality of the traffic generation could be improved, to get closer to being accurate in what a real user would do.

There are some slight things to improve such as SNI (Server Name Indication) in traffic generator: the behaviors of the generated applications is not 100% accurate. We are working closely with the lab and with their support team to improve these features.

When we are simulating a user that goes on Netflix, we want to make sure that we will see the traffic of this specific user generated by BreakingPoint. The DPI should see Netflix 100% of the time. Today the accuracy of the traffic generator is not 100% stable.

Ixia BreakingPoint is pretty stable.

Ixia BreakingPoint is a lab product. There is no point to increase usage or going to scale with such product.

Our experience with Ixia customer service has gone pretty well so far. We have dedicated support directly from Ixia. We have professional services that were part of the bundle when we bought the product. So far, so good.

We bought Spirent CyberFlood. We are currently using both products.

We did not switch, we just bought both of them.

We have the two main solutions on the market: Spirent CyberFlood. Ixia BreakingPoint is the other product. By comparison, the Spirent product was much simpler to handle and to deploy. 

It took one or two days at the max to setup Ixia BreakingPoint.

Our entire implementation took one day or two. We did it ourselves. We spoke directly with Ixia for the implementation. No reseller involved.

There is no return on investment in our case because there is no ROI whatsoever in the project. The idea is to deliver a technological demonstrator.

Stress test is a small portion of the project.

The license cost of the product is something like €10K a year. For three years, we would pay between €30-40K estimated. 

This is a ROM and pricing is calculated per uses case basis.

At first we bought Spirent CyberFlood. We quickly came to the conclusion that Spirent had some problems, with our specific setup, and decided to contact Ixia to evaluate their solution.

We are not 100% happy with any of these products.

Make sure that you can heavily test the product before purchasing.

Testing will tell you if it works as expected with your lab setup.

The breaking point UI is little bit fuzzy compare to the Spirent Cyberflood.

On a scale of 1-10, I would rate this product a 7.

It is for network and security testing. It is not used for applications network and security solutions.

Our customers use it to troubleshoot their existing solution. They use it for acceptance testing.

The DDoS testing module is useful and quick to use. In a normal test, the level of each configuration flow and the realism of generated traffic is something that we like to use.

I would appreciate some preconfigured network neighborhoods, which are predefined settings for testing networks.

The flash GUI has room for improvement.

It is stability of degree, because they partly move it into HTML5. The other part is still under flash, so the part which is running in the flash is sometimes unstable.

You can scale up to 100G, and a 100G is realistic traffic. Therefore, there have been no issues.

We have received quick reactions and always get answers from the tech support.

Depends on what you want to do. If you have specific demands on what the test should look like, then the initial setup is complex. If you want to run some traffic and videos, then the initial setup is straightforward, and you can have it in about five clicks.

For a small company, they have subscription license for a year, and bigger companies also buy subscription licenses. Thus, there is no differentiation in licenses for Breaking Point. For one license, you will get all the features. There is no complexity in that.

If you want to deploy it on OpenStack, you should start with the support question about how you should do it.

Application Simulator: For simulation of Layer 7 traffic over LTE Network elements.

BPS VE evaluation was used for testing LTE Network elements with a focus on user plane testing BPS VE along with its UI and new concepts to reduce the complexity of manual testing to a large extent. BPS VE provides the scope to automate the tests using REST API or Tcl API, which can improve the quality and speed of testing.

Currently BPS VE's REST API was just developed (some specific functionalities are implemented) and can be improved for better control over the tool using scripts, which help in test automation.

We used this product as a subject of our master thesis for four months.

We performed test cases with durations of four hours, eight hours, 12 hours, and 24 hours with good stability results.

Being a virtual tool, it inherits the benefits of virtualization. Scale out in terms of traffic generation blades is much easier compared to its physical version. The only limiting factor, in terms of scalability, is that you have the number of licenses required to run the tests.

Technical support was very quick and precise when we were in need of help. Ixia had helped us with installation and also trained us with respect to the tool.

No. We didn’t use a different solution prior to BPS VE.

Initial setup was pretty straightforward in terms of setting up the tool in the lab environment and also configuring the network neighbourhood in an LTE Network. BPS VE simplifies the test simulation with its concepts, such as Network Neighbourhood and superflows. BPS VE is provided with a good collections of examples which can be modified for quick testing.

No.

We did not had the chance to evaluate all the products available in the market, but the performance of BPS VE, it was very satisfying.