KELOWNA – Network testing in the digital world sure ain’t easy. And it’s only going to get tougher, according to Aglient’s Peter Schweiger, who spoke to a group of network technicians and engineers Thursday on Ethernet testing at the CommTech Trade Show and Seminars in Kelowna, which wrapped up today.
A good Ethernet signal and a bad one can mean different things, depending on the application(s) being uses. Simple e-mail and web surfing doesn’t strain the network and some latency and packet loss tends not to be a big deal.
But, when it comes to providing voice or video, the network must be stable. It must sound good and look good.
And there are so many variables on the network, techs must know when and where to test – and have the proper gear to show them just what the problem is and how to find and fix it. And this can lead to many places where the network provider’s IT people have been known to at least think, if not say: “My job is to make sure you have service, not to trouble-shoot your PCs,” said Schweiger.
But with today’s homes more and more becoming IP hubs, techs have to enter the homes to fix problems far more than every before, so they had better be well-versed in testing the networks for issues because “it’s a different measurement depending on the bandwidth available and the services provided,” he added.
And when it comes to Ethernet, its very nature is a best-effort network meaning “the world relies on technology that is basically like the postal service where you send it off and hope for the best,” said Schweiger.
And because “delay, is a big deal with VOIP,” he explained, hoping for the best when providing voice isn’t good enough, so testing must be rigorous.
He suggested starting from the demarcation point and looking for the simple stuff first like faulty connections (the RJ45 connector is notoriously fragile) or bad/old cable. “Eighty percent of the problems is just bad cable,” he said.
And if you think providing a stable network for data and voice is tough, IPTV “makes everything ten times tougher,” said Schweiger.
Jitter and delay are readily apparent when a customer, who is used to a stable TV signal can see problems. “We like our TV and we like it perfect,” he explained. “Anything less is really bad so quality of experience is critical.”
And while building big buffers might eliminate or decrease jitter, that will cause channel changing to slow down, diminishing that QoE. And the big deal again, he added is even though you can see the poor picture, “where is it coming from?”
Finally, Schweiger noted than last year, the overall traffic from YouTube was the same as generated by the entire world wide web in 2001, “and when that goes high definition, we’re all going to need new networks.”
– Greg O’Brien
