Partner Equipment Testing
By Doug Kreitz
Solutions Director
This article takes a simple look at the testing cycle for all the pieces of equipment that come together
to form a deployable network.
Before solutions reach our customers, four levels of testing take place to ensure smooth product performance.
- Equipment Functional and Quality Assurance testing
- Equipment End-of-Line testing
- Interoperability testing
- End-to-End Solution testing
Each step of the process is important in assuring that customer equipment works properly.
These steps are described in a little more detail below.
Equipment Functional and Quality Assurance (QA) testing involve creating a comprehensive set of test cases that
verify that the product conforms to its own specification and push the limits of the equipment's capacity, exercising all of the
capabilities of a product. This testing is generally performed by the equipment developer or product manufacturer to ensure that
their product behaves as expected. The goal is to eliminate defects that would otherwise be present in all units of the equipment.
Although the primary responsibility for QA testing of partner equipment primarily resides with our partners, the MetaSwitch Interop
Test Group, nonetheless, does perform some QA testing on MetaSwitch Accredited devices. This reflects the holistic view we have of
the overall solution (see below), which cannot hang together if individual elements are not robust. For instance, we recently ran
tens of thousands of calls through one of our MetaSwitch Accredited BLC partner's product over a weekend, to prove stability of the
BLC running alongside MetaSwitch.
End-of-Line testing is generally done by manufacturers to eliminate "one-off" product hardware defects
before they reach customers. A set of tests is performed on a statistical sample of products as they exit the assembly line with
important distinctions made between bugs, which will affect all products of a certain build and defects, which will only affect a
portion of the products.
Interoperability testing is a key focus of the MetaSwitch Interop Test Group (ITG). For partner products that
use the voice interface of the MetaSwitch, we test signaling and call flows from the MetaSwitch to ensure that these systems behave
as intended. An example could be as simple as when the subscriber on phone "A" calls someone on phone "B".
We want to assure that subscriber "A" hears ringing until phone "B" picks up. Alternatively, testing the products
that use the management interface of the MetaSwitch means ensuring that the resultant state matches the intended change in the user
interface of the partner product. For instance, turning up a new subscriber in a partner Operational Support System (OSS) will result
in all of the required parameters being set on the MetaSwitch to enable the subscriber.
End-to-End Solution testing goes beyond functional/QA testing for each piece of equipment within the network, and
interoperability testing between the various pieces of equipment. A great example of this type of testing is the measurement of
end-to-end quality of service for a particular set of products. Products that have individually passed QA testing, interoperability
tests and end-of-line testing may work well independently, but may not work well together as a total solution. System Level testing
is performed on multiple products assembled to provide a specific business solution. Once the solution has been tested thoroughly,
customers can deploy the combination of products with confidence.
Recognizing that this total end-to-end solution testing is crucial for our customers, MetaSwitch invests in this
activity, incorporating partner equipment into our testing in three different respects. Firstly, MetaSwitch's own System Test laboratory
includes specifically-identified, commonly deployed, pieces of partner equipment. The MetaSwitch System Test team focuses on real
deployment scenarios, as well as thrashing our own products using test rigs, emulators and harnesses. Secondly, the Interoperability Test
Group goes beyond interoperability and QA testing, and is increasingly focused on testing the entire solution. Thirdly, we have a policy
of "eating our own dog food", and our Alameda facility uses a combination of a MetaSwitch softswitch and various pieces of
partner equipment to deliver the internal phone service used by our own staff, all day, every day.
As always, please feel free to forward questions and comments to
.
Back to the December 2006 newsletter
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