Spirent validates gateway market

Spirent Communications has announced a testing solution for benchmarking and validating gateway GPRS support nodes (GGSN) that increasingly are being deployed in mobile networks.

The GPRS Performance Test System is targeted at both network equipment manufacturers and carriers, and it is Spirent’s first analysis tool addressing core GSM/GPRS infrastructure. It was co-developed with Nortel Networks.

The test system can emulate hundreds of thousands of users simultaneously accessing and moving through a GPRS network, and record the effect on the data bandwidth that is available to users. The system also tests GGSNs for interoperability with other network elements and devices.

John Curtis, manager of mobile strategy at Spirent, said mobile carriers need information about how their networks will perform, and how much data bandwidth, will be available to customers when their GPRS facilities are under extreme duress. The tool eventually will perform the same kind of emulation as networks are upgraded from GPRS to EDGE.

“For service providers, they all have a data throughout level on the low end that is the minimum they want their users to experience at any time,” he said.

Having those benchmarks will help carriers improve reliability, and eventually will better position them to offer service level agreements to business customers guaranteeing specific quality-of-service thresholds, Curtis said.

“Service providers want ways to get more money out of their data networks, and you would have to think that some business users would be willing to pay a premium for guaranteed service quality,” he said.

The system’s interoperability validation will come in handy as many carriers look to open their networks up from single-source equipment domains to multi-vendor environments.