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Trust No One (Mu Dynamics Blog)

Thomas Maufer — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:18:34 -0800

In a recent article published in Dark Reading, we read this: "Nearly 80 percent of security products fail to perform as intended when first tested -- and most require two or more cycles of testing before achieving certification, according to a new report from ICSA Labs, which performs security product testing. The ICSA Labs Product Assurance Report -- a first-of-its-kind study co-authored by ICSA and the Verizon Business Data Breach Investigations Report research team -- offers insights from ICSA's tests of thousands of security products from the past 20 years." That's just the beginning.

The Elephant in the Test Lab (Mu Dynamics blog)

Aswath Mohan — Tue, 3 Nov 2009 09:59:50 -0800

Current approaches to improving productivity while managing costs associated with support, test and development are failing. A big part of the engineering team's efforts that are often unacknowledged and not planned for, involve dealing with customer issues after deployment. This affects operational cost, time to market for new services and reputation with customers. Using the Mu solution, there is a better way forward that tremendously increases the effectiveness of engineering teams involved in support, test and development.

The Value We Deliver For Our Customers - (Mu Dynamics Blog)

Dave Kresse — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 09:31:00 -0700

The reality is that testing industry has not kept pace with the rapid innovation around IP services evident within carrier networks, within the smart grid initiatives, within government, within Software as a Service and within the Cloud….until now.

What is Unique About Mu’s IP Service Testing Solution - Mu Dynamics Blog (Mu Line)

Dave Kresse — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 09:25:59 -0700

Mu Dynamics' key breakthrough around testing IP services is in effectively overcoming the challenge posed by the unique and rapidly changing nature of operator’s IP services.

A Breakthrough in Addressing the Challenges of IP Service Testing - Mu Dynamics Blog (Mu Line)

Dave Kresse — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 21:25:27 -0700

I am very proud and fortunate to be working with such dedicated and talented people at Mu Dynamics. That feeling of pride ramped up a notch higher today as we publicly announce a true breakthrough in IP service testing.

Announcement: Collaborative Network Forensics from Mu Dynamics

Thomas Maufer — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 12:46:00 -0700

Mu Dynamics' pcapr now has access to over 26.3 million additional packets. Dive in and explore!!

Accuracy vs. Precision in Testing

Thomas Maufer — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 10:52:54 -0700

Anyone who has ever compared the IP service traffic on a network with what the standards say is supposed to be happening will find less than perfect agreement. Standards define the structures and semantics of services and underlying protocols and all the associated terminology, but are only a snapshot of a moment in time. With the rapid evolution of standards, it's impractical to wait for test equipment vendors to catch up with Test Suites that comply with those standards, and in fact this may not even be desirable.

Testing Your Competition - Mu Dynamics Blog (Mu Line)

Ajit Sancheti — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 11:59:15 -0700

Mu Dynamics Blog: End customers know that product features and functionality information from vendors do not give them valuable insight into the quality or suitability of a product for their use. Customer Proof Of Concept labs (CPoC labs) are now testing and demonstrating exactly how products perform in their network and IP Service environment.

Building Trustworthy/Dependable VoIP Services through Aggressive Testing, Part 2

Thomas Maufer — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 11:13:49 -0700

...Trust is the result of a rigorous, scientific testing process applied consistently throughout the deployment life cycle. The thing about trust is that the operator can try to buy best-of-breed equipment, hire the best operations team, etc., but at the end of the day, a single bad customer experience undermines all that hard work. Building trust is much harder than breaking it....

Building Trustworthy/Dependable VoIP Services through Aggressive Testing

Thomas Maufer — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 15:44:58 -0700

If you want to escape the rat race, stop behaving like a rat ....

Aswath Mohan — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 14:32:25 -0700

In the test space the traditional model for testing any NEW service or protocol is fundamentally broken. The rate at which new services and protocols are being rolled out for consumers will need a new model for generating and running tests.

Big Thank You to Mu User Group

Dave Kresse — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 11:08:23 -0700

I was fortunate to be part of Mu's initial Bay Area Mu User Group (MUG) last night in Milpitas.

Testing for the Unexpected (part 2 of 2)

Dave Kresse — Tue, 2 Jun 2009 11:34:08 -0700

I started noticing several interesting trends in our customers about six months ago, and it really hit home when I spoke at the NAB show on IPTV testing a couple of weeks back.

Testing for the Unexpected (part 1 of 2)

Dave Kresse — Thu, 28 May 2009 09:15:25 -0700

With the large increase in converged application and service deployments (VoIP, IPTV, IMS, VPLS data services, etc.), I am on the road talking with Mu’s operator, government and vendor supplier customers on a consistent and frequent basis.

Economic Risks of Not Testing Networked Applications

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 17:01:51 -0700

Is this latest bump in the economy a resurgence or just another corner? How can you learn to plan for the unexpected and unknown? Broad topic but very applicable to the growing number of leading network operators and their vendors using Mu to more completely test their networked applications and product development processes (software development life cycle, or SDLC).

Response to Patrick Park's Network World VoIP Security blog

Thomas Maufer — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 16:34:29 -0700

Patrick wrote an excellent blog posting (http://www.nwwsubscribe.com/community/node/38818) about the way that Protocol Fuzzing could be used to find bugs like the recently disclosed "INVITE of Death." Patrick's blog made me wonder whether he's aware of the multiple commercially available fuzzing solutions that are on the market; of course, Mu has been shipping such a capability for almost 4 years now as part of a comprehensive automated reliability, availability and security testing solution.

Fighting Fire with Fire: Deal with the Top-25 by Adding Teeth to Your SDLC

Thomas Maufer — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 17:12:05 -0800

The top-25 list certainly stimulated some discussion, but to my mind it placed too much of the blame for bugs on the programmer and didn't have enough appreciation of the role of complexity of networked software systems. The right way to tackle this problem is through thorough testing, using invalid or unexpected traffic based on what the software will be exposed to in the real world

Dealing with Emergent Complexity by Improving Software Engineering Processes

Thomas Maufer — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 10:03:37 -0800

When faced with complex systems with complex behaviors, software engineering tools and processes deployed throughout the software development life cycle must embrace, not ignore, the complexity in order to eliminate most bugs before the code is deployed in the field. Any tool that only looks at the code (source or binary) without testing the reactions of the code to real (broken) traffic, isn't even scratching the surface.

Complexity Is an Emergent Phenomenon

Thomas Maufer — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 16:19:43 -0800

Is it really as simple as this: "There appears to be broad agreement on the programming errors," SANS Director Mason Brown said. "Now it is time to fix them. First, we need to make sure every programmer knows how to write code that is free of the Top 25 errors, and then we need to make sure every programming team has processes in place to find, fix or avoid these problems and has the tools needed to verify their code is as free of these errors as automated tools can verify." ?

From MPLS to IPTV -- Lessons Learned

Thomas Maufer — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 21:22:20 -0800

Mu's had quite a few customer and prospect demonstrations around newer Service Level Traffic variation and related Mu Test Suite automation capabilities during the last month. From 20-31 October, the every 2 year MSF GMI event; from 19-22 October there was MPLS 2008; and on Nov 6, a customer case-study seminar for leading operators and vendors. This week offers IMS-based IPTV demonstrations at TelcoTV in Anaheim.