octoScope Fully Automated Test Suite Brings the Latest Broadband Forum Standard to Wi-Fi Router Testing

Littleton, Massachusetts, April 8, 2021 - octoScope®, a Spirent Company and the leader in accurate, repeatable and automated wireless personal testbeds, announces the introduction of a test suite for the TR-398 Issue 2 Wi-Fi router performance test standard from the Broadband Forum.

Customer care calls and truck rolls associated with Wi-Fi are a big pain point for service providers. They are looking for testing solutions that help them quantify the performance of a Wi-Fi router prior to releasing it on the market. To address this need, Broadband Forum has recently released an update to its TR-398 in-home Wi-Fi router performance standard. Issue 2 of TR-398 added performance test cases for Wi-Fi 6 and for mesh networks. TR-398 is the only standard to systematically and quantitatively evaluate home Wi-Fi router performance. It does this across seven dimensions: receiver sensitivity, throughput, coverage, multiuser support, anti-interference, stability and mesh networks.

Issue 2 added test cases to measure the performance of mesh networks, including roaming outage and throughput via mesh repeaters.

octoScope’s TR-398 test suite implements all 17 test cases required by the latest Broadband Forum standard. All can run on octoScope’s STACK-MAX testbed, while 12 of the 17 test cases run on octoScope’s STACK-MIN, and five on octoScope’s STACK-MESH testbed. STACK-MIN and STACK-MESH are both subsets of STACK-MAX. The implementation features a web UI that enables the test cases in TR-398 to be run individually, in groups, or all at once. A printable HTML report is generated at the end of the execution of the test cases.

“We are excited to announce this implementation of TR-398 Issue 2, because this test solution will be of great benefit to telecom operators and end users when selecting optimal Wi-Fi solutions,” said Fanny Mlinarsky, founder of octoScope.

About the Octobox personal wireless testbed

Stackable and configurable Octobox personal testbeds are completely isolated from external interference and can be used at an engineer’s office or lab bench.

Each Octobox testbed is controlled by a dedicated Node.js web server accessible via a browser UI for manual control, or via REST API for test automation. The server provides the time base for the testbed and controls the built-in instruments, DUT configuration, traffic, and test flow. Test results are saved in a MongoDB database, enabling multiple teams to easily collaborate by sharing the test automation scripts and test results.

About octoScope

octoScope, a Spirent Company, is the market leader in isolated, repeatable and automated wireless personal testbeds. Our patented technology redefines the accuracy, stability, economics and value of over-the-air wireless testing. The Octobox testbed is configurable for automated regression test sequences with a range of airlink conditions and interference scenarios. The Octobox testbeds are scalable to support a single DUT or multi-node mesh systems under test.

The testbeds feature powerful technologies to evaluate the behavior and performance of a broad range of wireless devices and systems. The tested capabilities include protocol monitoring, test traffic generation, motion and multipath emulation, interference generation and device emulation.