The Challenge: Automating Rigorous Protocol Testing on the Home Router
Everyone knows of the Linksys home router family. The E-series product line of advanced Wi-Fi routers are their most popular, and it’s easy to see why. As more and more “Super Gateways” come onto the market - gateways that have very rich feature sets that can cover a wide variety of consumer and service provider needs - the need to test the protocols and functions that make these devices “super” in the first place has never been more critical.
With the exhaustion of IPv4 address space over the last year, IPv6 is of particular importance, especially on the home gateway as service providers seek to make the transition. Getting IPv6 to work, and work well, on consumer devices requires rigorous testing at the protocol level - testing that is incredibly tedious to do manually. A test tool that can revolutionize this important and detailed testing for vendors and service providers is a necessity.
"CDROUTER HAS SIGNIFICANTLY REDUCED OUR TEST TIME, AND THAT MEANS WE CAN DO MORE TESTING, MORE OFTEN." - Nelson Cao, Software QA Lead Engineer at Linksys
The Solution: Fully Automated, Comprehensive CPE Testing with QA Cafe CDRouter
“We’ve been using CDRouter for over four years now,” said Nelson Cao, Software QA Lead Engineer at Linksys. “It’s changed our process so much I don’t even remember how we used to do it. It has significantly reduced our test time, and that means we can do more testing, more often.”
In addition to the benefits of automation, the breadth of CDRouter testing has been a boon to the Linksys project team. “The comprehensiveness of the test cases are really helpful,” said Nelson. “We are testing IPv6 every day, and the ability to verify all of the things that the protocol might do or need to do has been a key use for us.”
Coupled with CDRouter’s easy to use interface, Linksys has been able to get to the fine details of their testing and resolve issues even faster. “Access to the detailed test logs really lets us get to the root cause faster,” said Nelson. “That, coupled with the built in packet trace viewer, makes it an invaluable tool.”
Quality Service and Support
A test tool that has become the industry standard for CPE testing doesn’t get there by features alone, but also by standing by its users with an excellent support team that is knowledgeable in all things related to the vast world of CPE protocols.
“Support from QA Cafe is great. We’ve always received instant responses,” said Nelson. “What’s more, using the tool and its logging and trace features, coupled with the knowledge their support team has, makes learning the ins and outs of new protocols much easier. The result is a much more robust product on our end that we are confident will work in our customers’ networks.”
