IBM TPNS

TPNS (Teleprocessing Network Simulator) is an IBM product used to simulate large numbers of network terminals to a host system, both for stress testing and functional testing. Primarily an SNA terminal simulator, it is also capable of simulating non-SNA terminals types such as X.25.

TPNS can also be used to simulate TCP/IP servers and clients. Another very useful feature of TPNSis that it can be used for prototyping software during the development process.The web site below illustrates the use of STL -- A TPNS higher level language -- to prototypeelements of an ATM shared network.

[http://www-306.ibm.com/software/network/tpns/library/mel_whitepaper.html TPNS Prototyping]

IBM Workload Simulator for z/OS is another, similar tool more recently introduced to the market.