PORTLAND, OR, November 8, 2006 – Network World magazine recently conducted the largest ever WiFi performance and scalability test. The test was conducted using VeriWave’s WaveTest 90 performance analysis system. The Findings from this test appear in this week’s issue of Network World.
Network World commissioned leading test lab Network Test to conduct the assessment. A comprehensive WLAN test methodology was designed in order to evaluate performance and scalability using real-world metrics. These metrics included throughput, latency, VoIP call capacity, and roaming. The test setup consisted of twenty-five WLAN access points (APs), with accompanying switches and controllers from each participating vendor and VeriWave’s WaveTest 90 system. VeriWave’s WLAN Benchmarking, Roaming, and VoIP/QoS Test Suites measured throughput, (determining the maximum forwarding rate each system under test could sustain with zero packet loss), roaming delays, and voice quality (as defined by ITU-T standards and represented as MOS or R-Value scores).
Network Test president David Newman says, “Enterprise-class tests like these expose performance issues that just don’t come up in small-scale tests. The VeriWave test instruments not only allowed us to build a large-scale WiFi test bed, but also to stress-test WLAN equipment the way it’s actually used in large deployments. We also appreciated the VeriWave instruments’ ability to produce very precise latency and jitter measurements; these are key metrics for voice over WiFi and video applications.”
“The test highlights the importance of large scale enterprise-class performance testing, as it uncovered numerous end-user experience issues,” said Eran Karoly, VP Marketing for VeriWave. “Some of the issues uncovered in this test and similar tests conducted with this large scale test bench include delayed authentication of users logging onto a WLAN network, security risks associated with lack of synchronization between the APs and WLAN controllers under heavy load, and long roaming delays that cause voice calls to drop as users move within the enterprise environment. These types of issues can now be detected and corrected by WLAN equipment vendors during the development and prior to deployment of their systems, thus greatly improving the quality of WLAN’s, making them a mainstay of mission critical networks.”
“As the average number of access points per installation continues to increase, large scale testing is essential prior to deployment. It is part of VeriWave’s mission to close the gap between wireless and wire-line robustness and quality,” states Chris DeMonico, CEO at VeriWave. “Now for the first time in the industry wireless equipment manufacturers and service providers have the tools to test large scale wireless enterprise networks prior to deployment.”
To read more about the test, see www.networkworld.com/reviews/2006/110606-wifi-test.html
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