Layer 2 and layer 3 protocol behaviour under normal conditions tells you very little about how your device will perform when things go wrong. And things do go wrong. Links drop, topologies change, control-plane storms happen, failover kicks in. What matters is how fast the device converges back to a working state, and whether it converges correctly. A spanning tree loop that takes 30 seconds to resolve or a BGP session that doesn't re-establish after a peer restart. Those are the kinds of problems that bring down production networks.
Our engineers put switching and routing protocols through real stress testing. We simulate convergence events, induce topology changes, inject faults, and push real traffic through the device while all of this is happening. STP, RSTP, MSTP, OSPF, BGP, ISIS, VRRP, HSRP. We test them individually and in combination, because protocol interactions are where the edge cases hide. Failover timing, route table correctness, traffic blackholing during convergence. We characterize all of it.
For traffic generation, we work with both vendor-grade and open-source tools depending on what the test requires. Ixia and Spirent for high-density, line-rate traffic that needs precise measurement at the packet level. Iperf for throughput and bandwidth validation. SIPp for VoIP call simulation when voice traffic is part of the picture. We pick the right tool for the job, not the most expensive one.
You get a clear picture of how your device recovers under pressure. Not a pass/fail summary, but detailed timing data, packet captures, and analysis that your development team can act on.