Testing Over Time is Essential in Measuring the Success of Business Application Delivery
A one off bandwidth test, even if the results are good, does not provide an accurate insight into how the application will perform 24/7, much like reading the first page of a book doesn't tell the whole story. Business Applications are expected to perform 365 days a year, so it's important to assess the performance of a network over extended periods of time.
So, what does this mean for network measurement...?
To do a thorough test of any connection requires the test to run on a regular basis over an extended period of time. The longer the period the more thorough and useful the test. MCS provides a satellite framework to run tests on an automated time basis across multiple segments of a network, this provides a baseline assessment of the performance and behavior of the network for the time period measured.
A Satellite is both a client and a server. Satellites can be deployed across the enterprise network, WAN or LAN, and any satellite can test and measure to any other satellite. This establishes a mesh architecture. Satellites are supported on the standard platforms, Windows, Mac and Linux, as well as the Android and iOS mobile platforms.
MCS's centralized management model allows any administrator to manage a large network with few resources. Satellites are part of the NetQCheck SDK, which allows for developing on other platforms, such as routers, switches, firewalls and even telephone handsets.
Every data (TCP) packet that goes out onto the network is given a fixed amount of time to reach its destination.
If that packet fails to reach its destination another packet will be sent out onto the network, which is called a retransmit event.
When a retransmit event occurs the sender of the packets assumes it's the cause of the problem so it dramatically reduces the flow of packets, even though it may not be the problem.
The problem doesn't end here. If the reason for the retransmit event was packet loss then all the packets after the loss can't be processed.