The Challenge: Proving and improving the quality of broadband CPE
Ping Communication is a worldwide leader in the design and manufacture of Broadband Access CPE and home networking products, covering a wide spectrum including xDSL, Fiber, Cable, LTE/3G/CDMA gateways and Wi-Fi. It is Ping Communication’s consistent testing and iterative improvement, particularly when dealing with the IPv6/IPv4 concurrent networks many providers are using, that sets it apart in the complex and demanding world of service provider networks.
“Our products are made for ISPs so, unlike many of our competitors, we focus on giving our customers the functions they need as experts in their own deployments,” said Tobias Kurz, Field Application Engineer at Ping Communication. “Our goal is to ensure successful operation of Ping devices in the provider’s network, home and office environments, and continuously improve our products in line with our customer’s needs.”
"HONESTLY, WE'D NEED A HUGE TEAM OF (EXPENSIVE) EXPERTS TO COVER ALL THE KNOWLEDGE THAT IS COVERED BY ALL THE TEST CASES PRESENT IN CDROUTER." - Tobias Kurz, Field Application Engineer at Ping Communication
The Solution: Using CDRouter’s expansive testing and comprehensive automation platform
“CDRouter became more present when a Ping customer related project was mostly driven by results of the CDRouter test suite,” said Tobias. “The possibility of automated testing including repetitive testing of the same cases (looping) gave the needed kick to purchase the product and use it for more than just this one project.”
Simple to start and user friendly
“Getting started was simple. Our first tests could be run successfully after watching 3-5 introduction- and getting started-videos,” Tobias said. “The CDRouter system provides ease of use functionality and seamlessly tours you through the process. It’s user-friendliness allows you to quickly start through the GUI, and easily navigate the system with its ability to run from command line, extend existing and create new test cases. The very flexible and easy way to simulate a customer environment or test setup through CDRouter configuration files makes it so much simpler and faster to reproduce scenarios and issues reported by customers.”
3 Main Purposes of CDRouter for Ping
“In development, we use CDRouter primarily for three purposes,” said Tobias. “First, we use it to verify bug fixes. The combination of configuration (always the same for one device), package (varies depending on the fix that needs to be verified) and loops makes this easy.”
“Secondly, we use long-running test loops to reveal inconsistencies in results, which may be caused by memory leaks or similar. CDRouter makes this possible as a reliable, stable, persistent system.”
“Third is benchmarking,” said Tobias. “We run the same tests against many different devices with the same configuration inside to compare them to each other. CDRouter’s ability to export results in different formats and the new API make this possible.”
“Our main goal from the beginning has been saving employees resources for testing devices, which we have accomplished in two ways: it saves a huge amount of resources for tests that had to be run manually before, and it extends the amount of tests tremendously. Honestly, Ping would need a huge team of (expensive) experts to cover all the knowledge that is covered by all the test cases present in CDRouter.”
“Having the CD Router Test suite for automated testing has given the technical employees of Ping Technologies the chance to put more focus on customer service, look & feel and usability of the devices, QA, individual supervision of projects and customers and many other value ads.”
Transforming automation and validation allows Ping Comminication to deliver on their products
“CDRouter is well known in the market and for some customers the main reference of software testing,” Tobias said. “If marketing is hot for some results, you can quickly provide PASS or FAIL states of certain tests. Not only does CDRouter improve Ping’s development process, it also gives us a realistic view on the software status of our products, including which features our sales department can proudly point out that are supported and implemented well and which ones are to be improved. Possessing this knowledge allows Ping’s sales team to make better recommendations of the right product based on customers’ requirements and focused features.”
“Moreover, CDRouter support helps Ping directly improve our products,” said Tobias. “When starting to focus on the CDRouter test suites, many questions came up and I fired them at the support. They always handled them very well, replied fast, and kept me up to date on the progress of longer investigations. Today, when writing to the support, it feels a bit like writing to a colleague at work, which is very pleasant.”
“In the end,” said Tobias, “Ping needs to be ready to support as many customer cases as possible and by passing the test cases of CDRouter, I am positive that we are.”
