Emulating BACNET
The Building Automation and Control network (BACnet) protocol defines a network communication standard for building control systems to communicate. These building control systems include devices and applications for heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning (HVAC) control, lighting control, access control, and fire detection. These control devices exchange information with other devices using the BACnet protocol. BACnet/IP allows the BACnet protocol to operate over UDP on IP networks.
Before deploying a new BACnet-enabled control unit in a BACnet/IP network, it would be helpful to verify that the new control unit can handle the full range of adverse network conditions that are likely to occur. These include network congestion, slow links, time outs, packet loss, etc. The BACnet/IP engineer can then see the effects on the control units and the network to find and fix bugs, solve network problems, and learn the limits of device and application performance.
Emulate a Real-World BACnet/IP Network in Your Lab
For testing, validation, and troubleshooting, IWL network emulators help test and replicate bugs in new releases and at customer sites by replicating a BACnet/IP production network.
For demonstrations, tradeshows, training, and learning, our network emulators emulate a real-world BACnet/IP network so that engineers can understand how to correlate network behavior with the cause of the behavior to learn how BACnet/IP works and how a product performs.
BACnet/IP Stack/Engine Testing
BACnet/IP, like any other network protocol, depends on a software "stack" operating properly to drive the protocol and applications that use it. Most stacks and applications work under perfect conditions. Unfortunately, stacks, applications, and devices operating at real-world customer networks are rarely perfect.
Applications and stacks encounter:
Periodic link failures
Routers suffering from periodic congestion
Routers that are misconfigured
DNS name resolution delay
Temporarily unavailable nodes (servers, routes)
Even worse, anti-social hackers create unusual or hostile packets and malicious protocol changes to wreak havoc on the network devices.