The plainly named “Master Test Plan for Wireless LANs and Muni-Wireless Networks” is just that — guidelines on best practices for metro-scale and enterprise WLAN equipment. The free (all you pay is your contact info) document, in PDF format, is available now from VeriWave, which makes the WaveTest platform for Wi-Fi equipment testing.
“This is a straight-up document — it’s not part of the WaveTest suite,” clarifies Eran Karoly, vice president of marketing at VeriWave. “It’s not integrated. It’s a guideline. The intention is to make it an industry objective approach” that will serve as a guide for customers and non-customers alike.
The document is broken up into various tests, such as handling data, running the control plane for features like load balancing, Quality of Service (QoS) with voice over Wi-Fi, and of course the municipal section with mesh. Miscellaneous items include authentication, power savings and RFID traffic. The testbed configuration goes into running all the tests with the VeriWave WaveTest 90 — this is, in the long run, about selling some test products, after all.
Karoly says “the document is intimidating in its bulk, but you don’t have to run all the tests.”
Part of the reason for putting this out is that VeriWave says many customers didn’t know what to test, so instead of doing unnecessary tests, they didn’t test at all.
VeriWave is the only test vendor for the VoIP Wireless Initiative being held at Interop 2007 next week in Las Vegas. Vendors that use the WaveTest products include ZyXEL, Tropos, Firetide and Trapeze.
