Patent ID: 6922663

Claim:
A simulator for inserting simulated network frames onto a physical medium for delivery to a system under test over a network, comprising: a bridge device having a network interface card for communicating with the network; the bridge device including first and second interfaces; and a frame generator, coupled to the bridge device via the first interface, for generating at least one simulated network frame from each of multiple virtual clients according to a specific network communications protocol; wherein: the bridge device transfers, via the second interface, the at least one simulated network frame from each of the multiple virtual clients from the frame generator to the system under test via the network to simulate traffic of the multiple virtual clients; for each of the multiple virtual clients, a unique identifier combined with bridging information is associated with the at least one simulated network frame; and the bridge device receives one or more network frames from the system under test via the network in reply to the simulated network frames transferred thereto; and the bridge device operates at a data link layer in a protocol stack.