The Challenge: Finding a Full Featured Test Tool for a Full Featured Gateway
Technicolor is a world leader in nearly all areas of the digital home and broadband business markets. Their Service Gateways for both residential and business applications are used by some of the biggest Internet Service Providers all over the world. For this reason, it has been Technicolor’s aim to make their Gateways as versatile and fully featured as possible in order to cover a wide range of customer scenarios easily and efficiently through broad configuration options.
Such a fully featured gateway requires a lot of testing to make sure that the breadth of protocols supported - including IPv4 and IPv6, voice and video support, WiFi and protocol support for the digital home, and advanced features like TR-069, firewall and IDS - are flawless from each new firmware to the next. “We needed to speed up our test cycles during continuous integration testing,” said Koen Aerts, QACC Test Engineer at Technicolor. “Safeguarding regression testing is critical.”
“We wanted a robust, reliable, and straightforward test solution,” said Koen. “We wanted a living tool that was extendable and had the level of support and technical resources necessary to help us through the development process of new Internet standards as they are adopted by the community, like IPv6.”
"COMPARING QA CAFE CDROUTER SUPPORT TO OTHER SUPPORT DEPARTMENTS... I CAN HONESTLY SAY THAT QA CAFE PERFORMS THE BEST." - Koen Aerts, QACC Test Engineer at Technicolor
The Solution: CDRouter’s Comprehensive Test Automation Platform
“We were quite impressed by CDRouter at first glance,” said Koen. “We were convinced this is the tool we should have. In addition to the comprehensiveness of test cases, it has necessary logging features like Wireshark traces and step-by-step logging.”
Not only did CDRouter’s test feature set meet Technicolor’s needs, but its interface, BuddyWeb, made their process even easier.
“We use CDRouter nightly in our regression runs, and use the relevant test cases for our gateway products as often as possible,” said Koen. “The user interface is key; BuddyWeb lets us jump immediately into the logs and debug what happened from the test runs. We can easily share the results with the software department and collaborate on issues.”
“We see at once what went wrong, and all the relevant information is available in a straightforward way. This definitely helps us get it right the first time.”
A Testing Company with Technical and Responsive Support
A testing tool itself is not enough for today’s advanced gateways and their product teams. Even a technically great tool is nothing without the support and know-how to back it up, and QA Cafe delivered on this to Technicolor.
“QA Cafe can proudly say that they take their support seriously,” said Koen. “In the world of standards, everyone can interpret things differently. The QA Cafe team is open to suggestions for improvement and is cooperative and responsive on highly detailed technical questions. They don’t immediately assume it’s a problem with the DUT and have a no-nonsense mentality.”
“All of this is done in a swift and efficient way that lets us get fast feedback to our team, and ultimately, quality products to our customers,” said Koen.
“This win-win approach is really a pleasure. Comparing QA Cafe support to other support departments from lab equipment that we consult from time to time, I can honestly say that QA Cafe performs the best.”
