This latest benchmark was achieved by delivering 20,000 transactions per second per licensed core on an Intel® Xeon® CPU E5-4650 server with 32 cores.  This allows a linearly scalable performance of 620,000 stateful protocol transactions per second using a single commercial off the shelf server.

This performance can be achieved as a single emulated network node or with 1000+ nodes, with 100+ Million subscribers, with customized call flows involving multiple interface applications, such as Gx and Rx, for testing DRAs or PCRFs.

About dsTest®

Available in the current release, this new performance benchmark, and Developing Solutions’ growing collection of protocol applications, gives dsTest the ability to identify potential bottlenecks in the lab before they show up in the network.  Developing Solutions helps carriers and equipment manufacturers avoid costly downtime by easily scaling an environment to simulate hundreds of millions of subscribers to test capacity, scalability and redundancy.

dsTest originates, receives, and processes signaling traffic into and from the core network.  Multiple emulated nodes can be coordinated to simulate the UE traffic for complex signaling interactions such as VoLTE.  Unlike some test tools, dsTest provides stateful, standards-based applications that react appropriately to both expected and unexpected events without the need for scripting.  We have simplified the process of performance testing the signaling core with multiple advanced testing features, such as SmartEvents™, Diameter Dictionary validation, and SmartAVP™ customized messages.

dsTest surpasses all other tools with  its capacity, its performance, and the ease with which you can customize the scenarios and messages to achieve your testing goals.

To learn more about Developing Solutions core network emulation and test solutions, refer to our product page or contact Developing Solutions, Inc. at contact@developingsolutions.com or (877) 233-8350.

About Developing Solutions, Inc.

Developing Solutions is a test equipment software development firm founded in 2002 with extensive experience in the Telecom and Datacom industries, including both NEM and test equipment manufacturers.  Developing Solutions is located in the DFW Metroplex.

Some of the features planned for dsTest v2.6 development cycle include:

• Customer Requested Features;
• Streaming/Filtering of Captured Packets;
• SLs Interface Application – Location Services (LCS) interface, located between the MME and the E-SMLC;
• 3GPP RADIUS Application;
• OM Threshold Notifications;
• Ongoing Interface Application and Protocol Enhancements;
• Performance Linear Scalability to 31 cores;
• Copy/Paste from/to inbound/outbound messages;
• Traffic Rate Modeling;
• GUI Support for Server Notifications;
• Embedded Help – Pop-up help for all structures and parameters;
• OM Graph Enhancements
  • Chart configurations saved;
  • OMs graphed from OM database files;
  • Customizable colors.
• SmartMonitor™
  • Subscriber Tracing – Follows a subscriber’s progress through a SmartFlow™ or SmartEvents™ State Machine;
  • Instrumented State Machine – State Machine diagram annotated with the number of subscribers in each state.
• Subscriber ID/Profile Groups – Subscribers mapped to profile definitions;
• Integrated SSH Shell;

This event also marks the completion of the dsTest v2.5 development phase.

Release v2.5 brought many new applications and feature enhancements to the dsTest platform:

• Interface Applications/Protocols:
  • SLh;
  • SLg;
  • SWm;
  • SWa;
  • RADIUS;
  • DHCP.
• Packet Capture – Capture packets between dsTest nodes.
• Dynamic Identity - dsTest automatically learns the identity of the subscribers for all primary identities, if all subscribers are otherwise configured identically.
• Inspection of Messages and AVP Dictionaries on inbound messages – Configure dsTest to inspect and trigger on inbound messages for matches on user-customizable message and AVP templates.
• Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP) authentication method support for the S6b, STa, SWa, and SWm Diameter interface applications.
• Server Notifications - Client applications can register for, and be notified of, server events.
• Hosted Floating Licensing – a licensing model hosted by Developing Solutions allowing customers to share a license across multiple groups within an organization, across multiple test servers, and thus share dsTest testing resources and applications.
• dsTest Status and Operations Window – Server-level status/commands and control of existing dsTest nodes;
• dsTest Server Diagnostics Window – Status, memory, events, timer, interface, messages; diagnostic commands for dsTest servers;
• OM Graphing Enhancements – Customizable chart sizes.

About dsTest

dsTest originates, receives, and processes signaling traffic into and from the core network.  Multiple emulated nodes can be coordinated to simulate the UE traffic for complex signaling interactions such as VoLTE.  Unlike some test tools, dsTest provides stateful, standards-based applications that react appropriately to both expected and unexpected events without the need for scripting.  We have simplified the process of performance testing the signaling core.

dsTest surpasses all other tools with  its capacity, its performance, and the ease with which you can customize the scenarios and messages to achieve your testing goals.

To learn more about Developing Solutions‘ core network emulation and test solutions, refer to our product page or contact Developing Solutions, Inc. at info@developingsolutions.com or (877) 233-8350.

About Developing Solutions, Inc.

Developing Solutions focuses on providing test solutions for core network interfaces in Policy & Charging Control (PCC), Subscriber Management, Authentication Accounting & Authorization (AAA), and Diameter Routing Agents (DRA). Developing Solutions was founded in 2002, and has extensive experience in the Telecom and Datacom industries, including both NEM and test equipment manufacturers. The company is located in the DFW Metroplex.

Developing Solutions now provides a cloud-based, hosted version of Floating Licensing for users that do not want to manage their dsTest resources.

With a hosted floating license, users can take advantage of their dsTest resources without worrying about the physical hosting requirements.  Developing Solutions provides access to those resources with a dsTest deployment that is:

• Managed by Developing Solutions;
• Available inside or outside the user’s private network;
• Secure;
• Redundant, with uninterrupted operation;
• Geographically distributed;
• Monitored 24×7.

The use of a hosted license provides the structure for a highly reliable Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) deployment of dsTest.  Platform virtualization is supported with this form of dsTest deployment, allowing dsTest features and capabilities to be dynamic, delivering the required conditions for a dsTest  environment for functional testing without the need for active customer management of the resources.

About dsTest

dsTest generates signaling traffic into the core network based on simulating UE activity from an emulated node. Multiple emulated nodes can be coordinated to simulate the UE traffic for complex interactions such as VoLTE.  Unlike some test tools, dsTest provides stateful, standards-based applications that react appropriately to both expected and unexpected events without the need for scripting.  Developing Solutions has simplified the process of performance testing the signaling core.  Where dsTest surpasses all other tools is with its capacity, performance, and the ease with which scenarios and message content can be customized to achieve testing goals.  dsTest provides unmatched capacity and performance with more than 300,000 stateful protocol transactions per second, scaling to more than 100 million subscribers on a single server.

To learn more about Developing Solutions core network emulation and test solutions, refer to our product page or contact Developing Solutions, Inc. at contact@developingsolutions.com or (877) 233-8350.

About Developing Solutions, Inc.

Developing Solutions is a test equipment software development firm founded in 2002 with extensive experience in the Telecom and Datacom industries, including both NEM and test equipment manufacturers. Developing Solutions is located in the DFW Metroplex.

Network elements such as the PCRF and OCS, along with the DRA, must be prepared for this traffic volume.  These nodes have the difficult task of maintaining the state of the subscribers, one of the most valuable resources for a network operator.  Charging systems such as the OCS will see high traffic volume as more LTE elements come online.   Part of the preparation is devising reasonable high availability (HA) schemes for the networks and the nodes that make up the networks.  Since previously established performance and capacity expectations quickly become obsolete, testing these HA scenarios efficiently and effectively are of upmost priority for service provider and OEMS.

High Availability Testing

HA schemes can take many forms, including functional or geographical redundancy, load balancing, throttling, active/standby, hot backups, and combinations of these factors.  Each scheme has its own advantages and disadvantages, including cost of implementation.  Network operators and OEMs will choose the combination of capabilities that best matches their requirements, architectures, and network growth expectations.

Developing Solutions® has simplified the testing of the HA scenarios with dsTest®.

dsTest allows you to:

• Test and evaluate high availability and failover schemes;
• Test and evaluate load balancing scenarios;
• Simulate complex real world network scenarios;
• Evaluate network nodes, and the reaction of the network, before the nodes are placed into service;
• Simulate both Diameter servers and clients;
• Test several interfaces at the same time.

Consider the example in the diagram above.  A pair of Diameter Signaling Controller/Diameter Routing Agents (DSC/DRA) is configured for Geo-Redundancy for PCRF and OSC clusters.

With dsTest, configure multiple PCEF and CSCF nodes each having a primary and secondary Diameter connection to the DSC/DRAs for the Gx, Rx, and Ro interface applications.

1. Test the DSC/DRA ability to load balance across the Diameter interfaces from the client nodes to the PCRF and OCS clusters.  Monitor the active subscribers on each PCRF and OCS to insure that the load balancing is in agreement with the load balancing configuration(s);
2. During the test, disable the connections to one of the DSC/DRAs, or take one of the DSC/DRAs out of service.  Verify the retransmission of in-progress messages is directed to the appropriate PCRF or OCS.  This verifies the DSC/DRA’s ability to maintain the state of the subscribers in the appropriate PCEF and OCS.
3. Test the DSC/DRA’s ability to throttle traffic by rejecting some of the retransmitted in-flight messages or new connections until the Policy and Charging clusters catch up.  This will verify that throttling will prevent a PCRF or OCS from being overrun by traffic, a critical ability when a node goes down, to avoid a domino effect.

By using dsTest client simulators, this specific example represents a test of the HA features of a Diameter Router and/or PCRF and OCS clusters.

Read more about our solutions for Testing Diameter Routing.
Read more about our DRA, PCRF and OSC Emulators.
Read more about testing Policy Management.
Read more about our Advanced Diameter Testing Features.

About dsTest

Wireless Service Providers and Network Equipment Manufacturers (NEM) rely on Developing Solutions’ dsTest to test capacity and reliability of their network devices and architectures.

dsTest offers a comprehensive set of high performance testing solutions for the 3G and 4G core networks.  A single dsTest platform scales to support thousands of network connections, hundreds of million subscribers, and hundreds of thousands of transactions per second from a single server.

To learn more about Developing Solutions core network emulation and test solutions, refer to our product page or contact Developing Solutions, Inc. at info@developingsolutions.com or (877) 233-8350.

 About Developing Solutions

Developing Solutions focuses on providing test solutions for core network interfaces in Policy & Charging Control (PCC), Subscriber Management, Authentication Accounting & Authorization (AAA), and Diameter Routing Agents (DRA). Developing Solutions was founded in 2002, and has extensive experience in the Telecom and Datacom industries, including both NEM and test equipment manufacturers. The company is located in the DFW Metroplex.

Read the Ixia Press Release

Read more about Ixia’s iXLoad using Developing Solutions technology.

See Ixia showcase the solution at Mobile World Congress 2013.

About dsTest

dsTest offers server emulation and client simulation capabilities for comprehensive testing of 3GPP 3G and 4G core network interface functionality and performance.  dsTest generates signaling traffic into the core network based on simulating UE activity from an emulated node. Multiple emulated nodes can be coordinated to simulate the UE traffic for complex interactions such as VoLTE – a network element can be surrounded with client simulators that simulate client activity;  a server emulator can be provisioned with the interfaces necessary to support end-to-end testing;  agents and proxies can be tested using both client simulation and server emulation.  dsTest provides stateful, standards-based applications that react appropriately to both expected and unexpected events without the need for scripting.

• Measure call performance and capacity
• Verify new mobility features and standards before deployment
• Identify performance ceilings and bottlenecks
• Validate system scalability with easily scalable subscriber loads
• Plan capacity
• Monitor for real-time test configuration, event triggering, and measurement sampling
• Set unattended test modes for users, creating real-world scenarios with heavy load and long-duration stability tests

Read more about dsTest, or contact Developing Solutions.

About Developing Solutions

Developing Solutions focuses on providing test solutions for core network interfaces in Policy & Charging Control (PCC), Subscriber Management, Authentication Accounting & Authorization (AAA), and Diameter Routing Agents (DRA).  Developing Solutions was founded in 2002, and has extensive experience in the Telecom and Datacom industries, including both NEM and test equipment manufacturers.  The company is located in the DFW Metroplex.

Using dsTest, EANTC validated various benchmarks for the Quantum Policy Suite, including:

• 50,000 new sessions activated per second;
• Linear scale-out to 250,000 transactions per second;
• 75 million concurrent active subscribers running 195 million simultaneous Diameter sessions;
• Less than 14 millisecond average transaction latency.
  

  Message Flow Sate Machine

dsTest provided PCEF and CSCF simulation with 24 simultaneous Gx and Rx interface connections, hosted on a single COTS server; and dsClient™ GUI, which allowed EANTC to quickly construct complicated test configurations including call flow state machines using Developing Solutions’ SmartEvents™ and SmartAVP™ features.

Three separate test phases were implemented:

• Subscriber activation ramp-up: activating 75 million subscribers at 50,000 activations per second;
• Subscriber initiated VoLTE calls, each lasting 15 minutes:  At the end of the call, the subscriber also initiated a user location update message, resulting in150,000 Diameter sessions activated per second, and 195 million simultaneous Diameter sessions;
• Subscriber ramp-down: subscriber sessions were terminated at a rate of 50,000 transactions per second.

Using dsClient GUI, dsTest was configured with the PCEF and CSCF simulators running 24 simultaneous Gx and Rx interface connections to support the performance and scalability  evaluation of the Quantum Policy Suite.

dsClient GUI also allowed EANTC to monitor the tests in real-time using transaction and message measurement graphing.

Read the full report on Cisco’s Website.
See a demonstration at Cisco’s booth at Mobile World Congress 2013

Read more about dsClient GUI.

About dsTest

dsTest generates signaling traffic into the core network based on simulating UE activity from an emulated node.  Multiple emulated nodes can be coordinated to simulate the UE traffic for complex interactions such as VoLTE.  Unlike some test tools, dsTest provides stateful, standards-based applications that react appropriately to both expected and unexpected events without the need for scripting.  Developing Solutions has simplified the process of performance testing the signaling core.  Where dsTest surpasses all other tools is with its capacity, performance, and the ease with which scenarios and message content can be customized to achieve testing goals.  dsTest provides unmatched capacity and performance with more than 300,000 stateful protocol transactions per second, scaling to more than 100 million subscribers on a single server.

Read more about dsTest.

About Developing Solutions

Developing Solutions focuses on providing test solutions for core network interfaces in Policy & Charging Control (PCC), Subscriber Management, Authentication Accounting & Authorization (AAA), and Diameter Routing Agents (DRA).  Developing Solutions was founded in 2002, and has extensive experience in the Telecom and Datacom industries, including both NEM and test equipment manufacturers.  The company is located in the DFW Metroplex.

Developing Solutions and Acme Packet at MWC 2013

View Acme Packet’s post.

About dsTest

dsTest generates signaling traffic into the core network based on simulating UE activity from an emulated node. Multiple emulated nodes can be coordinated to simulate the UE traffic for complex interactions such as VoLTE.  Unlike some test tools, dsTest provides stateful, standards-based applications that react appropriately to both expected and unexpected events without the need for scripting.  Developing Solutions has simplified the process of performance testing the signaling core.  Where dsTest surpasses all other tools is with its capacity, performance, and the ease with which scenarios and message content can be customized to achieve testing goals.  dsTest provides unmatched capacity and performance with more than 300,000 stateful protocol transactions per second, scaling to more than 100 million subscribers on a single server.

For more information about  dsTest, contact Developing Solutions.

About Developing Solutions

Developing Solutions focuses on providing test solutions for core network interfaces in Policy & Charging Control (PCC), Subscriber Management, Authentication Accounting & Authorization (AAA), and Diameter Routing Agents (DRA).  Developing Solutions was founded in 2002, and has extensive experience in the Telecom and Datacom industries, including both NEM and test equipment manufacturers.  The company is located in the DFW Metroplex.

For more information on the Hitachi CTA demonstration, click here.

Developing Solutions‘ HSS Emulator can support up to 1000 peer connections, support a database of more than 100 Million subscribers and interaction between multiple interfaces such as S6 and Gr.

The HSS Emulator supports both 3G and 4G interfaces and can be used simultaneously to support evolution deployment testing and roaming or fallback scenarios.

• HSS Emulator 4G interfaces: S6a, S6d, SWx, Cx, Sh, and S13 (Simulated EIR functionality)
  
• HSS Emulator 3G interfaces: Gr, Wx, and Cx

Read more about our HSS Emulator.

For more information about  dsTest, our HSS Emulator, or our other test solutions, contact Developing Solutions.

 About dsTest

The dsClient™ GUI can be used to easily configure custom message flows, and the SmartAVP feature can be used to customize the messages within the flows.

Read more about the dsTest RADIUS application.

About dsTest

dsTest generates signaling traffic into the core network based on simulating UE activity from an emulated node. Multiple emulated nodes can be coordinated to simulate the UE traffic for complex interactions such as VoLTE.  Unlike some test tools, dsTest provides stateful, standards-based applications that react appropriately to both expected and unexpected events without the need for scripting.  Developing Solutions has simplified the process of performance testing the signaling core.  Where dsTest surpasses all other tools is with its capacity, performance, and the ease with which scenarios and message content can be customized to achieve testing goals.  dsTest provides unmatched capacity and performance with more than 300,000 stateful protocol transactions per second, scaling to more than 100 million subscribers on a single server.

Read more about dsTest.

Developing Solutions focuses on providing test solutions for core network interfaces in Policy & Charging Control (PCC), Subscriber Management, Authentication Accounting & Authorization (AAA), and Diameter Routing Agents (DRA).  Developing Solutions was founded in 2002, and has extensive experience in the Telecom and Datacom industries, including both NEM and test equipment manufacturers.  The company is located in the DFW Metroplex.

“To properly test the Policy Manager we needed the ability to coordinate the actions of multiple interface applications such as Gx, Rx, and Sy.  dsTest was instrumental in enabling the team to implement the complex call flows, feature requirements, as well as easily scale to meet the performance requirement of more than 200,000 transactions per second”, said Carsten Rossenhoevel, Managing Director of EANTC AG.

Comverse PCRF Performace Testing State Machine

Developing Solutions® provided dsTest hosted on a single server with 16 cores, and dsClient™ GUI, which allowed EANTC to quickly construct complicated test configurations including call flow state machines using Developing Solutions’ SmartEvents™ and SmartAVP™ features.

Four separate scenarios were tested: Gx, Gx/Rx, Gx/Sy, and Gx/Rx/Sy.  These scenarios called for subscribers being active for 30 minutes performing coordinated updates with customized AVPs on the interfaces under test. dsTest simulated 36 Million active subscribers and maintained the more than 200,000 TPS requirement.

Using dsClient GUI, the dsTest server was configured with PCEF and CSCF simulators running the Gx and Rx interfaces and an OCS emulator running the Sy interface to support the performance evaluation of Comverse’s PCRF.  The dsClient GUI also allowed EANTC to monitor the tests in real-time using transaction and message measurement graphing. View the complete dsTest configuration file here.

Read more about dsClient GUI.
Read the EANTC Press Release.
Read the Comverse Press Release.

About dsTest

dsTest generates signaling traffic into the core network based on simulating UE activity from an emulated node. Multiple emulated nodes can be coordinated to simulate the UE traffic for complex interactions such as VoLTE.  Unlike some test tools, dsTest provides stateful, standards-based applications that react appropriately to both expected and unexpected events without the need for scripting.  Developing Solutions has simplified the process of performance testing the signaling core.  Where dsTest surpasses all other tools is with its capacity, performance, and the ease with which scenarios and message content can be customized to achieve testing goals.  dsTest provides unmatched capacity and performance with more than 300,000 stateful protocol transactions per second, scaling to more than 100 million subscribers on a single server.

Read more about dsTest.

About Developing Solutions

Developing Solutions focuses on providing test solutions for core network interfaces in Policy & Charging Control (PCC), Subscriber Management, Authentication Accounting & Authorization (AAA), and Diameter Routing Agents (DRA).  Developing Solutions was founded in 2002, and has extensive experience in the Telecom and Datacom industries, including both NEM and test equipment manufacturers.  The company is located in the DFW Metroplex.