Traffic simulators

Will the cisco lab be able to generate real world (ish) traffic that can be used to test network configurations ?

Do any network simulators have traffic generators built into them for that matter ?

I have Bosun for ccnp at home and it seems ping is the only way to test routes, ACLs, etc. Is that the norm ?

We haven't got any traffic simulators as yet Starfire, but its certainly a nice feature we can look into once the labs are complete!

Cheers,