Patent ID: 7006963

Claim:
A method for providing a high fidelity simulation of a client/server system including a server and intelligent client workstations, the method comprising: simulating at level 2 of a protocol stack by formulating client requests having unique client identifiers at the level 2 of the protocol stack; transmitting the client requests on a communications channel having routing access to the server for servicing the client requests; the step of simulating at level 2 of the protocol stack further comprising: formulating data to emulate the client requests to submit to the server; padding the formulated data with header data that conforms to a communications protocol used by the server in receiving the client requests; and for each respective client request, producing at least one level 2 data frame from the padded data by inserting the unique client address into the padded data, the unique client address representing a respective one of the client workstations that submitted the respective client request.