Network QoS Testing

If you don’t test it, you can’t improve it.

Quality of Service (QoS) is a method of measuring, improving and guaranteeing network performance by controlling network performance parameters such as:

• Delay
• Packet loss
• Jitter
• Packet sequencing
• Bit error rate
• Voice/video quality

Collectively these metrics are known as QoS parameters. Network managers and providers must ensure the proper values for these QoS parameters are maintained to ensure network-centric applications run properly. QoS also allows a network to provide better service to selected network traffic, by prioritizing certain types of traffic over others.

Network QoS is often specified by Service Level Agreements (SLAs), which exist between the network manager or provider and the end-user, covering items such as data reliability, availability, latency, throughput and security.

When it comes to SLAs and network QoS, it’s all about network performance–performance of mission critical enterprise applications and performance of network intensive applications such as VoIP, Video over IP, streaming media and VPNs.

 “How do I emulate different network SLAs to determine if they will provide the network QoS that meets my business needs?”

Enterprise Users: You must ensure that your network performance is sufficient for your business requirements and determine the required SLA for acceptable application performance.

Equipment or Solution Providers: You need confidence that you can deliver network QoS to your customers. Network QoS testing is essential prior to providing new services and applications to your customers and in order to avoid SLA penalties.

Anue GEM and XGEM Network Emulators are ideal for QoS testing because they can emulate up to 64 different network profiles simultaneously at full line rate for all packet sizes, enabling you to reproduce with accuracy any network configuration and condition, including delay, jitter, errors, drop, reorder, fragmentation, duplication, buffering, flow control, and bandwidth constraints.

By running your critical enterprise applications in a specific emulated environment in a controlled and repeatable manner, you can adjust parameters and test for as many iterations as required to determine what SLA you must establish and maintain based on performance and availability.

With Anue Network Emulators, you can simulate QoS and SLA parameters in a lab environment–accurately, repeatedly and efficiently–in order to:

• Determine which QoS class of service is best suited for your network applications.
• Assess the sensitivity of your applications to traditional QoS parameters such as bandwidth, packet loss, delay, and jitter.
• Emulate various SLAs to ensure that your QoS requirements are being met
• Generate QoS testing results to avoid over-engineering your network and over-paying for a higher level of service than you need.
• Determine how your network and network devices will perform when QoS is not enforced in the network.
• Enable rapid troubleshooting of network performance bottlenecks.
• Conduct effective capacity planning by understanding end-to-end performance of critical applications under various network impairment scenarios.