A leading network equipment vendor adopted Mu Studio Performance and Mu Studio Security for testing its DPI-based networking product.  Mu Dynamics’ easy-to-use solution enabled the vendor to successfully ensure the performance and resiliency of its DPI-based system.

Testing Requirements

The vendor needed to thoroughly test the application detection and classification capabilities in advance of delivery to ensure they functioned and scaled as expected. They needed to:

• recreate over 350 different applications, including eDonkey, Skype, Jabber, ICQ and Gmail.
• recreate multiple Skype and BitTorrent applications, based on version, location and user activity as new versions become available.
• leverage the same test solution and assets to automatically create malformed application scenarios for resiliency testing
• facilitate the rapid adoption by testers and engineering teams, given their limited time constraints.

Challenges

Existing legacy testing tools only offered minimal application support with a labor-intensive user interface. This left testers without the ability to recreate the hundreds of popular, and constantly changing, applications. They needed a solution that could validate the DPI technologies delivered the resiliency they needed when subjected to the rigors of a production network.

Solution

The vendor used Mu Dynamics to mirror the production environment, mixing different classes of application services, such as voice, video, chat and games, to test the scalability and performance of the system.   The Mu Studio products enabled them to:

• Access thousands of the latest applications on Mu TestCloud, including many versions and client platforms.
• Quickly and easily verify the detection and classification capabilities for individual applications and groups of applications.
• Mirror the production environment by mixing different classes of application services such as voice, video, chat and games  in order to test the scalability and performance of the system.
• Test the QoS and traffic management policies of the system.
• Thoroughly test the resiliency of the system as it processed a wide range of expected and unexpected malicious traffic profiles.

Results

The vendor was able to successfully test the performance and resiliency of its DPI-based system to:

• Ensure the effectiveness of the DPI application classification mechanism.
• Identify and fix several high-priority resiliency defects before customer shipment.
• Complete testing on time, with a high degree of confidence in product readiness.