Mu Dynamics’ cloud testing solution enables application-aware networks

Testing and validation vendor Mu Dynamics announced today a set of capabilities it believes will help operators and enterprises tame the application explosion currently wreaking havoc on their networks.

While other test tools enable people to write test cases, Mu’s solution is designed to enable customers to start testing in minutes through Mu TestCloud—an online collaborative community for the sharing of test assets—on which Mu has populated the most popular apps for testing. On the site, thousands of downloadable, ready-to-run, application-specific tests are accessible by service providers, enterprises and networking equipment vendors. The hope is to foster faster control of application policies governing security, scalability and functionality.

“As applications and security threats evolve at breakneck speeds, we intend to address the rate of change by diminishing the lag time associated with having test tool vendors write test applications over and over. We want our customers to know the specifics of impact of regular and high-def traffic associated with Youtube, Hulu and Netflix, as well as the unpredictable popularity of certain apps like ‘Angry Birds’ or the impact of P2P traffic,” said Mu Dynamics’ CEO Dave Kresse. He believes customers want to go beyond just identifying applications and move toward implementing real intelligence in their networks for applying policies around QoS, traffic shaping or security.

According to recent research conducted by Mu, “not all apps are created equal” in terms of impact on networks: “When you think of whether you’ve right-sized your network, you have to understand your app mix, the difference of standard-definition versus high-definition, and its effect on your resources,” said Kresse, who is focused on providing three key elements to his customers: “accuracy in recreation of the app; speed, with testing in minutes what could otherwise take months; and simplicity in terms of ease of use.”

According to Kresse, testing the policy engines built into key functions (DPI, lawful intercept, traffic shaping and prioritization) requires something different than the legacy test tools that rely on synthetic traffic and what he calls “meaningless application payloads.” He believes custom-developed solutions built around individual applications have to now give way to application-aware solutions that work in minutes to determine run-time aspects of today’s most popular applications, as well as the “consumer friendliness” and “operator friendliness” of the applications.

“The less bandwidth an application consumes, the more consumer friendly it can be when it comes to new usage-based pricing models,” explained Kresse. “The fewer connections required by an application within a given session the less resources an operator has to dedicate across its network.”