LTE Access Performance Testing
Hardening and optimizing 4G/LTE networks
With the quality expectations of mobile users on the rise, service providers need to know their network infrastructure can handle burgeoning traffic loads and ever-more-complex application traffic without compromising performance or security. For 4G LTE access networks in particular, carriers must optimize use of new eNodeB radio base stations critical to improving and sustaining spectrum efficiency, capacity, data rates, and end-user quality of experience (QoE) for mobile subscribers. The eNodeB performs radio resource scheduling and uplink/downlink rate limiting to enforce policy decisions and QoS characteristics associated to different service and subscriber types on the network.
Those rolling out Long Term Evolution (LTE) and 4G networks in particular must efficiently and accurately test mobile infrastructures under punishing real-world conditions—without spending a ton of time or money to do it. eNodeB testing involves validating multiple levels, including:
- Physical, protocol, and application layer functionality
- Security and handover performance
- User and control plane capacity and throughput
- Policy management and QoS mechanisms for converged voice, video, and data traffic
Ixia: Comprehensive, cost-effective, city-scale testing
Designed from the ground up to assess capacity, the Ixia test architecture scales to simulate thousands of UEs (user equipment) and has the flexibility to perform physical, protocol, and application layer testing. eNodeBs are isolated by emulating all surrounding nodes, including thousands of UEs/mobile subscribers, adjacent eNodeBs, the mobility management entity (MME), and the evolved packet core (EPC). To test policy management and QoS mechanisms, Ixia's LTE access test solution includes service quality validation using mobile subscriber modeling at very high load rate and advanced QoE measurements.
For cost-efficient, comprehensive security testing, Ixia BreakingPoint solutions feature an intuitive single-screen test configuration, enabling rapid testing of network security using real-world mixes of voice, video, application, and attack traffic at line-rate speeds. Application-aware devices can be examined in both 3G and LTE environments with support for GTPv1 and GTPv2, and per-UE accounting, billing, and policy mechanisms validated.
LTE Access Test Configuration
Ixia LTE/4G testing solutions:
- Validate service quality and security with subscriber modeling, multiplay traffic generation, and QoE measurements
- Emulate all key LTE network components, including millions of UEs and thousands of eNodeBs, and extreme network traffic conditions
- Assess the performance and security of mobility management entities (MMEs), serving gateways (SGWs)
- Verify reliable radio links between mobile subscribers and the network
- Maximize total cell/sector throughput and number of subscribers within a cell/sector
- Test the control (signaling) plane performance of eNodeBs
- Assess complex handover scenarios