InterWorking Labs

Last updated
InterWorking Labs
Type Privately held company
Industry Computer networking
Wireless networking
Genre Application Performance Management, communication protocol, Robustness testing
Founded1993
FounderChris Wellens
Headquarters
Scotts Valley, California
,
USA
Area served
Worldwide
Key people
Chris Wellens (CEO)
Karl Auerbach (CTO)
ProductsNetwork testing, network emulation, network optimization
OwnerChris Wellens (profitable since 1995)
Number of employees
+20
Website www.iwl.com

InterWorking Labs is a privately owned company in Scotts Valley, California, in the business of optimizing application performance for applications and embedded systems. Founded in 1993 by Chris Wellens and Marshall Rose, it was the first company formed specifically to test network protocol compliance. Its products and tests allow computer devices from many different companies to communicate over networks.

Contents

Products

InterWorking Labs' Products diagnose, replicate, and re-mediate application performance problems. [1]

The company's first product, SilverCreek, tests a Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) agent implementation (switch, server, phone) with hundreds of thousands of individual tests, including conformance, stress, robustness, and negative testing. The tests detect and diagnose implementation errors in private and standard MIBs as well as SNMPv1, v2c, and v3 stacks and implementations. [1]

The Maxwell family products emulate real-world networks, with problems such as delays, rerouting, corruption, impaired packets or protocols, Domain Name System delays or limited bandwidth. New impairments are added to Maxwell using C, C++, or Python extensions. It is controlled via graphical, command line, and script interfaces. It supports a set of protocol impairments for TCP/IP, DHCP, ICMP, TLS, and SIP testing. [1]

The Maxwell products are named after Maxwell's Demon, a thought experiment by 19th-century physicist James Clerk Maxwell. Maxwell’s Demon demonstrated that the Second Law of Thermodynamics—which says that entropy increases—is true only on average. In his thought experiment, Maxwell imagined a double chamber with a uniform mixture of hot and cold gas molecules. A demon (some intelligent being) sits between the two chambers, operating a trap door. Every time a cold (low-energy) molecule comes by, the demon opens the door and lets the molecule through to the other side. Eventually, the cold gas molecules are all on one side of the chamber and the hot ones all on the other. Although the molecules continue to move randomly, the introduction of intelligence into the system reduces entropy instead of increasing it.[ citation needed ]

The Maxwell product sits in the middle of a network conversation and opens or closes a figurative "door" on the basis of specific criteria. Maxwell intelligently modifies the packet based on pre-selected criteria and sends the packet on its way. [1] InterWorking Labs is advised by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Maxwell's network emulations reproduce real conditions in the lab before products are deployed.

History

InterWorking Labs was co-founded in 1993 by Chris Wellens and Marshall Rose. The two met in 1992 at the Interop Company, in Mountain View, California, where Wellens was Director of Technology and Rose was on the Interop Program Committee and also Working Group Chair of the IETF for the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP). [2]

Wellens—who was overseeing the trade fair's 5000-node InteropNet as well as an array of interoperability demonstrations for network protocols— noticed that engineers from different companies often interpreted network protocols differently and ended up struggling to make their products send and receive data to one another—sometimes just minutes before showcase demonstrations. The engineers asked Interop to create an interoperability lab where these network communication issues could be worked out in a private and less stressful environment. Interop's founder and CEO Dan Lynch concluded that the industry needed an interoperability testing lab. [2]

Lynch asked Wellens to write a business plan for a permanent Interoperability Lab. Rose proposed that the Lab's first task should be to create and try out a set of tests of the SNMP protocol, since SNMP was an area he was familiar with and one where engineers were having particular problems at Interop. Wellens volunteered to organize a group of developers for an interoperability test summit if Rose would create a set of tests and assist in developing the initial plan.[ citation needed ]

At about the same time, however, Ziff-Davis acquired Interop and chose not to proceed with the Interoperability Lab. Wellens and Lynch agreed that she should pursue the idea on her own. In 1993, Wellens established InterWorking Labs, and, in January 1994, organized the first SNMP interoperability test summit using 50 SNMP tests written by Rose. During that first test summit, a large number of implementations failed Rose's tests.[ citation needed ] The results persuaded several major corporations that interoperability testing would be a critical component of functioning networks. Participants at the second (1994) SNMP Test Summit included Cabletron Systems, Cisco Systems, Eicon Technology, Empirical Tools and Technologies, Epilogue Technology Corp., Fujitsu OSSI, IBM and IBM Research, Network General Corp., PEER Networks, SNMP Research, SynOptics Communications, TGV, Inc., and Wellfleet Communications. [3] [4]

In 2000, Wellens asked Karl Auerbach to join the InterWorking Labs Board of Directors. In 2002, Wellens hired Auerbach, who was part of Cisco's Advanced Internet Architecture group, to serve as chief technology officer at InterWorking Labs. An advisory board consisted of several members of the IETF who have expertise in networking protocols (Andy Bierman, Jeff Case, Dave Perkins, Randy Presuhn, and Steve Waldbusser). [1]

Markets

Wireless networks used by hospitals, police, and military have turned computer networks into essential lifeline utilities. Computer networks that keep economies, transportation, energy, and food supplies flowing commonly belong to the critical infrastructure of a region. As such, the performance of networks under adverse conditions is a significant concern for militaries, industry, and local and regional governments.

According to Wellens, UCITA has significantly protected software publishers from liability for the failure of their products. [2] But software publishers may become increasingly liable for the consequences of network failures—especially where comprehensive networking testing existed and was not used. Online retailers, for example, can demonstrate multimillion-dollar losses due to network problems such as security flaws or a network collapse after a denial of service attack.

Related Research Articles

In computer network engineering, an Internet Standard is a normative specification of a technology or methodology applicable to the Internet. Internet Standards are created and published by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). They allow interoperation of hardware and software from different sources which allows internets to function. As the Internet became global, Internet Standards became the lingua franca of worldwide communications.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">IPv6</span> Version 6 of the Internet Protocol

Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol (IP), the communications protocol that provides an identification and location system for computers on networks and routes traffic across the Internet. IPv6 was developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to deal with the long-anticipated problem of IPv4 address exhaustion, and was intended to replace IPv4. In December 1998, IPv6 became a Draft Standard for the IETF, which subsequently ratified it as an Internet Standard on 14 July 2017.

Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is an Internet Standard protocol for collecting and organizing information about managed devices on IP networks and for modifying that information to change device behavior. Devices that typically support SNMP include cable modems, routers, switches, servers, workstations, printers, and more.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cable modem</span> Broadband Internet access device

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">NetFlow</span> Communications protocol

NetFlow is a feature that was introduced on Cisco routers around 1996 that provides the ability to collect IP network traffic as it enters or exits an interface. By analyzing the data provided by NetFlow, a network administrator can determine things such as the source and destination of traffic, class of service, and the causes of congestion. A typical flow monitoring setup consists of three main components:

The Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF) is a prominent non-profit consortium that was founded in 1998. It promotes the development and deployment of interoperable computer networking products and services through implementation agreements (IAs) for optical networking products and component technologies including SerDes devices.

In computing, the robustness principle is a design guideline for software that states: "be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others". It is often reworded as: "be conservative in what you send, be liberal in what you accept". The principle is also known as Postel's law, after Jon Postel, who used the wording in an early specification of TCP.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Printer Working Group</span>

The Printer Working Group (PWG) is a Program of the IEEE Industry Standard and Technology Organization (ISTO) with members including printer and multi-function device manufacturers, print server developers, operating system providers, print management application developers, and industry experts. Originally founded in 1991 as the Network Printing Alliance, the PWG is chartered to make printers, multi-function devices, and the applications and operating systems supporting them work together better.

sFlow, short for "sampled flow", is an industry standard for packet export at Layer 2 of the OSI model. sFlow was originally developed by InMon Corp. It provides a means for exporting truncated packets, together with interface counters for the purpose of network monitoring. Maintenance of the protocol is performed by the sFlow.org consortium, the authoritative source of the sFlow protocol specifications. The current version of sFlow is v5.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Karl Auerbach</span> American lawyer

Karl George Auerbach is a California attorney and internet protocol engineer who made many significant contributions to the development of the Internet, Internet governance and the commercialization of many internet technologies. Mr. Auerbach is also known for suing the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)—of which he was an elected board member—for refusing to share corporate records in 2002. ICANN controls the assignment of domain names and IP addresses.

Marshall T. Rose is an American network protocol and software engineer, author, and speaker who has contributed to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the Internet, and Internet and network applications. More specifically, he has specialized in network management, distributed systems management, applications management, email, the ISO Development Environment (ISODE), and service-oriented architecture (SOA).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Media gateway control protocol architecture</span>

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The Wollongong Group (TWG) was one of the first companies to sell commercial software products based on the Unix operating system. It was founded to market a port of Unix Version 6 developed by researchers at the University of Wollongong, Australia. The company was active in Palo Alto, California from 1980 to 1995.

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References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 "InterWorking Labs". Company web site. Iwl.com. Retrieved May 28, 2013.
  2. 1 2 3 Sujan Sami (July 13, 2007). "Movers and Shakers—Interview with Chris Wellens, President & CEO of InterWorking Labs, Inc". Frost & Sullivan. Retrieved May 28, 2013.
  3. ↑ Chris Wellens (March 29, 1994). "SNMP Test Summit -- Conformance and Interoperability Testing - Experience and Future Plans". IETF online proceedings. Retrieved May 28, 2013.[ permanent dead link ]
  4. ↑ Marshall Rose (March 1994). "Network Management Area Directorate Open Meeting". IETF online proceedings. Retrieved May 28, 2013.[ permanent dead link ]

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