HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

InterWorking Labs is a privately owned company in
Scotts Valley, California Scotts Valley is a small city in Santa Cruz County, California, United States, about thirty miles (48 km) south of downtown San Jose and six miles (10 km) north of the city of Santa Cruz, in the upland slope of the Santa Cruz Mounta ...
, in the business of optimizing application performance for applications and embedded systems. Founded in 1993 by Chris Wellens and
Marshall Rose Marshall T. Rose (born 1961) is a 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 special ...
, it was the first company formed specifically to test network
protocol Protocol may refer to: Sociology and politics * Protocol (politics), a formal agreement between nation states * Protocol (diplomacy), the etiquette of diplomacy and affairs of state * Etiquette, a code of personal behavior Science and technology ...
compliance. Its products and tests allow computer devices from many different companies to communicate over networks.


Products

InterWorking Labs' Products diagnose, replicate, and re-mediate application performance problems. The company's first product, SilverCreek, tests a
Simple Network Management Protocol 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 behaviour. Devices that typically ...
(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
MIB The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit ...
s as well as SNMPv1, v2c, and v3 stacks and implementations. The Maxwell family products emulate real-world networks, with problems such as delays, rerouting, corruption, impaired packets or protocols,
Domain Name System The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical and distributed naming system for computers, services, and other resources in the Internet or other Internet Protocol (IP) networks. It associates various information with domain names assigned ...
delays or limited bandwidth. New impairments are added to Maxwell using C,
C++ C++ (pronounced "C plus plus") is a high-level general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension of the C programming language, or "C with Classes". The language has expanded significa ...
, or Python extensions. It is controlled via graphical, command line, and script interfaces. It supports a set of protocol impairments for
TCP/IP The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the set of communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the suit ...
,
DHCP The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) is a network management protocol used on Internet Protocol (IP) networks for automatically assigning IP addresses and other communication parameters to devices connected to the network using a cli ...
, ICMP,
TLS TLS may refer to: Computing * Transport Layer Security, a cryptographic protocol for secure computer network communication * Thread level speculation, an optimisation on multiprocessor CPUs * Thread-local storage, a mechanism for allocating varia ...
, and SIP testing. The Maxwell products are named after
Maxwell's Demon Maxwell's demon is a thought experiment that would hypothetically violate the second law of thermodynamics. It was proposed by the physicist James Clerk Maxwell in 1867. In his first letter Maxwell called the demon a "finite being", while the ' ...
, a thought experiment by 19th-century physicist
James Clerk Maxwell James Clerk Maxwell (13 June 1831 – 5 November 1879) was a Scottish mathematician and scientist responsible for the classical theory of electromagnetic radiation, which was the first theory to describe electricity, magnetism and ligh ...
. Maxwell’s Demon demonstrated that the
Second Law of Thermodynamics The second law of thermodynamics is a physical law based on universal experience concerning heat and energy interconversions. One simple statement of the law is that heat always moves from hotter objects to colder objects (or "downhill"), unles ...
—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. 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. InterWorking Labs is advised by the
Internet Engineering Task Force The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is a standards organization for the Internet and is responsible for the technical standards that make up the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP). It has no formal membership roster or requirements and ...
(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 Marshall T. Rose (born 1961) is a 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 special ...
. The two met in 1992 at the
Interop Interop is an annual information technology conference organised by Informa PLC. It takes place in the US and Tokyo (Japan) each year. 2016 marked Interop's (US) 30th anniversary and throughout that time, Interop has promoted interoperability and ...
Company, in
Mountain View, California Mountain View is a city in Santa Clara County, California, United States. Named for its views of the Santa Cruz Mountains, it has a population of 82,376. Mountain View was integral to the early history and growth of Silicon Valley, and is th ...
, 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 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 behaviour. Devices that typically ...
(SNMP). 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. 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 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 behaviour. Devices that typically ...
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. At about the same time, however,
Ziff-Davis Ziff Davis, Inc. is an American digital media and internet company. First founded in 1927 by William Bernard Ziff Sr. and Bernard George Davis, the company primarily owns technology-oriented media websites, online shopping-related services, and ...
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. 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 Cabletron Systems was a manufacturer of networking computer equipment throughout the 1980s and 1990s primarily based in Rochester, New Hampshire, in the United States. They also had manufacturing facilities in Ironton, Ohio, and in Ireland. Hist ...
,
Cisco Systems Cisco Systems, Inc., commonly known as Cisco, is an American-based multinational corporation, multinational digital communications technology conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develo ...
, Eicon Technology, Empirical Tools and Technologies, Epilogue Technology Corp., Fujitsu OSSI, IBM and
IBM Research IBM Research is the research and development division for IBM, an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, with operations in over 170 countries. IBM Research is the largest industrial research or ...
, Network General Corp., PEER Networks, SNMP Research,
SynOptics Communications SynOptics Communications was a Santa Clara, California-based early computer network equipment vendor from 1985 until 1994. SynOptics popularized the concept of the modular Ethernet hub and high-speed Ethernet networking over copper twisted-pair a ...
, TGV, Inc., and
Wellfleet Communications Wellfleet Communications was an Internet router company founded in 1986 by Paul Severino, Bill Seifert, Steven Willis and David Rowe based in Bedford, Massachusetts, and later Billerica, Massachusetts. In an attempt to more effectively compete ...
. In 2000, Wellens asked
Karl Auerbach Karl George Auerbach (born December 27, 1949 in Los Angeles, California) is a California attorney and internet protocol engineer who made many significant contributions to the development of the Internet, Internet governance and the commerciali ...
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).


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 Critical infrastructure (or critical national infrastructure (CNI) in the UK) is a term used by governments to describe assets that are essential for the functioning of a society and economy – the infrastructure. Most commonly associated wi ...
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 ''Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act'' (UCITA) was an attempt to introduce a Uniform Act for the United States to follow. As a ''model law'', it only specifies a set of guidelines, and each of the States should decide if to pass it or no ...
has significantly protected software publishers from liability for the failure of their products. 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.


References

{{reflist


External links

Video links:
Slow network speed on cruise ships

Introduction to SilverCreek

Implementing the IPv6 MIBs
Computer security companies Software testing Companies based in Santa Cruz County, California Companies established in 1993