Evaluating Wireless Broadband Gateways for Deployment by Service Provider Customers

OVERVIEW

A leading provider of voice, video, and data services to the residential and businesses communities designed its broadband network around the latest advances in network technology. For Wi-Fi, this meant the ability to deliver speed and efficiency, and maintain high-quality performance over distance.

Broadband service providers are constantly seeking ways to improve their average revenue per user (ARPU) by offering value-added services and multimedia applications on top of traditional voice and data services. Among other things, these services demand high quality and performance from the equipment deployed by the service provider.

Offering service in more than a dozen western U.S. states, the provider featured in this case study responded to demand from its customer base to extend broadband access wirelessly across the homes and businesses served. To guarantee superior customer satisfaction, the provider decided to qualify wireless broadband gateways or base stations (WBS) from two different vendors using Ixia’s IxVeriWave Wi-Fi test systems to subject the equipment to the actual network conditions it would encounter in live end-user environments.

Testing not only helped the provider assess the quality of two competing solutions, but also provided a clear picture of how each compared to enterprise-class wireless access points (APs).

THE CHALLENGE

The provider had several goals in evaluating wireless broadband gateway performance:

• Determining the ability of each WBS to deliver superior quality of experience (QoE) for users in a home networking environment

• Assessing the impact of subsequent software releases with minimal manual intervention

• Increasing the quality of the deployed solution, making it as good as or better than leading WLAN access points

• Understanding the latency, packet loss, and throughput characteristics of each WBS for various traffic conditions

• Ensuring customer satisfaction and superior end-user experience, thus reducing support costs

The provider decided to conduct testing of throughput, packet loss, and latency to baseline the performance of its WBS options. And more importantly, they wished to observe results for various combinations of test parameters to create real-world tests that were repeatable, automated, and able to run in controlled RF environments.

The only viable means of conducting the testing described above was using IxVeriWave traffic generator/analyzers.

THE SOLUTION

The service provider used Ixia’s WaveTest Wi-Fi Traffic Generator/Analyzer test system to verify the performance of its WBS devices in a multi-client environment at the WLAN IP transport and application layers. The IxVeriWave system delivered numerous benefits:

• Verification of application performance with emphasis on voice and video quality and its impact on end-user QoE

• Allowing tests to be conducted in different scenarios to assess the access network at realistic scale

• Providing high-level, easy to understand results and graphs along with detailed csv files containing per-flow statistics

`• Reducing test cycle times from 4-6 weeks to about 1-2 weeks while minimizing the necessary manual intervention of the testers