VeriWave Adds Open-Air Testing to Maximize QoE Performance Prediction in Vertical Industry Networks

(Product News, 18 Sep 2007)

VeriWave has announced the integration of WiMix, the industry's first performance prediction tool for wireless QoE (Quality of Experience) with an innovative open-air test methodology. The new open-air test methodology utilizes numerous portable VeriWave WT20 Traffic Generator/Analyzer units deployed in a real-world environment to accurately load a wireless infrastructure network with traffic from thousands of users. The test subjects the network to realistic conditions and reports end-user QoE for a wide variety of vertical deployments, such as healthcare, corporate offices, education facilities and retail outlets.

Trapeze Networks, one of the launch customers for VeriWave's WiMix test suite, is utilizing the open-air test methodology to precisely replicate various vertical market environments and ensure industry-leading performance and scalability of its Smart Mobile wireless technology. Prior to deploying this methodology, Trapeze used dozens of laptops to attempt to create large-scale testing in its open-air labs.

According to John Ye, Technical Engineer with Trapeze Networks, this approach became impractical. "Trying to keep dozens of PCs in identical working state and dealing with the unpredictability of the operating system's TCP/IP stack as a test tool was a daunting task. We needed a test setup that will allow us to conduct predictable and repeatable tests of corporate grade networks consisting of hundreds of Trapeze Smart Mobile access points," said Ye. "Using VeriWave's open-air test methodology combined with WiMix, we are achieving the desired goal of loading this network with thousands of individual users and reliably verifying performance—including advanced Smart Mobile capabilities, such as fast roaming and local switching to support latency-sensitive voice and video applications—under a wide range of operating conditions. With this added level of accuracy, we have accelerated our test procedures, increased test coverage and substantially lowered our overall cost of verification. It has helped us confirm that Trapeze's Smart Mobile provides the industry's most robust and scalable WLAN solution."

The open-air test methodology combined with WiMix offers the ability to evaluate a realistic network environment in a wide range of conditions including complex traffic mixes encountered in various vertical industries, various types of security mechanisms and combinations of data, voice and video traffic.

With pre-packaged traffic mixes from healthcare, education, office building, hot spot environments, government and law enforcement, VeriWave's WiMix eliminates the guesswork associated with predicting how specific equipment and network configurations will perform when turned up in live environments. The WiMix application leverages the unique capabilities of VeriWave's WaveTest platform that allow testers to generate and manipulate actual wireless clients and conditions. WaveTest allows users to create, configure and control variables impacting end-user experience and performance, including e-mail traffic, web browsing, CRM applications, audio and video file transfers, video sessions, voice calls, scanners, and RFID asset management and tracking devices. Hundreds of such sessions can be combined in complex traffic scenarios representative of live environments. The WiMix test suite allows the user to set pre-determined Service Level Agreements for each traffic type. At test completion, WiMix reports the ability of the network to adhere to these Service Level Agreements for each of the traffic types.

"To be thorough, leading providers of wireless infrastructure technology have been running concurrent lab and open-air tests," said Eran Karoly, VP Marketing at VeriWave. "They use VeriWave systems in their labs to create complex traffic conditions and test functionality, scalability, quality of service, mobility, and overall performance. But when its time to prototype their networks in live environments typical of the end-user environment, the traditional approach of using dozens of laptops becomes time consuming, inaccurate and frustrating. With this new test methodology, VeriWave bridges the gap between the two test environments, offering a comprehensive, repeatable and automated test solution."

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