Network Performance Testing

Test Vendor Alliances - going somewhere, or just talking?

Having been a member of the TesLA Alliance, I am surely putting myself out there for some criticism with this post, but I think it needs to be said. I have been a strong proponent for years that test vendors standardize even a small portion of their interoperability APIs so that us end-users can utilize generic frameworks to interact with the multitudes of devices we have in our labs.  I've watched the companies I've worked for, as well as many others, struggle with hiring purpose-trained, highly customized, developers that end up building massive frameworks that cost almost as much to maintain as the benefit they bring.  For the longest time, I assumed none of the vendors would be interested in something like this because they used eachother's inabilities and lack of this-that-or-the-other-thing against eachother, including interoperability. Then along came TesLA - sponsored by IXIA, who I consider to be the leader in the market for the last 4 years or so.  I was ecstatic to see their goals and be a core member of the group.  Unfortunately, not all of the vendors joined TesLA, and some of the key ones, like BreakingPoint and Spirent, were obviously not going to anytime soon.  This made it far less interesting to me as those vendors are key players that I would want to be part of the more global framework. Spirent had an offering here as well, which has mysteriously disappeared. New on the scene is the Network Test Automation Forum which has a bunch of new members, and folks from TesLA as well.  There's been little information on this new forum shared with the rest of the world, and frankly, I have little faith in any effort at this point given the stops and starts that the other two (TesLA and Spirent's) had up until now. Don't get me wrong - I loved the collaboration I saw from everyone in TesLA, and I think it was going in the right direction, but it felt like folks were too worried about making the standards so perfect for every vendor and every case, that we never really delivered anything usable to the end user.  I realize things like this take time, but I think the folks who have used this equipment have been patient enough for years, and someone really just needs to step up and deliver something in 2010. Where do you think we should be focusing efforts?  Standards?  Interoperability?  Or should someone just build a product that works with everyone else's stuff and leave it at that?

TesLA Standards posted

The TesLA Alliance has published it's standards drafts for public review.  Review requires that you register at the TesLA forum, which is free but does require administrator approval. The first draft of the standards includes information on the Device Control Adapter (DCA) and Resource Management and Scheduling. Head over and check them out - provide comments and your feedback - it's open until August 30th.

Gale joins TesLA Alliance

Announced yesterday, Gale Technologies has joined the TesLA Alliance.  I'm happy to see more folks joining the alliance, and I look forward to working with Gale in my capacity as a customer advisory board member. Gale's technology is pretty neat - something I'm investigating at work as I mentioned in a previous post.   I'm particularly interested in a system that will automatically provision and configure test architectures, and allow for dynamic scheduling and interaction with those test architectures from various different automation systems. Our system now is home grown, and while it serves it's purpose well, doesn't allow for as much flexibility as many of the commercial products.  We have yet to decide whether we'll buy one, or just add on to our own - still need to finish our evaluation of the various solutions out there first. More on that later...

TesLA Alliance Quarterly Meeting

I'm on the Customer Advisory Board for the TesLA Alliance and we had our second quarterly meeting this last week.  I missed the first meeting due to being sick, so it was great to finally meet the rest of the TesLA Members and the Customer Advisory Board as well. I am really excited about all of the new things that we're planning to do, and very appreciative to be involved with the entire alliance.  The caliber of all of the members and board is top-notch, and there are many very exciting dicsussions going on that will forever change this industry in the positive. Why is it so exciting to me? Well, first you have a collection of Members that span the performance, functional, and lab automation arenas.  Some of these vendors are bitter rivals, yet they met together, and all agreed on many things that will help to not only unify the market, but provide far more benefits to end customers.  There are even more vendors that are interested, and attended the first part of the meeting to see what it was all about. Second, you have the goals of the alliance, which are exactly what I've been looking for.  Defined and published standards.  Framework to allow vendors to communicate between each other.  Completely open to all vendors.  An alliance focused on all of these things, and not on building their own product. Third, the momentum behind this is amazing, and the amount of progress that has been made in the last few months shows that this is being done at the right time, and the right place.  So many people agree that the industry needs this ASAP. Finally, the customer advisory board - my colleagues are all top-drawer folks from varying parts of the industry.  One of the members was adding up the experience we all have together and we came up with something around 80 years!  We're the reality check for the rest of the alliance to make sure that what they're coming up with meets customer expectations.  It's a privilege to work with these folks on such a critical standard for our industry. What's next? I would like to see even more vendors participate in the alliance.  There are some noticeable key players that are still playing politics, when they should really just put those aside and get on board. There's a lot more planned, and a lot of new things happening every week.  Check out the Activities Calendar, or subscribe to the RSS feed for the site.  I'm looking forward to the ongoing participation, as well as the new folks who will be joining.

Leaders in IP Testing Announce the First Multivendor, Open Automation

A huge list of vendors today announced a partnership to collaborate on an open, multi-vendor solution for test automation, called TesLA. It seems to be led by IXIA, but there are some other big names along with them:

• Apcon
• Codenomicon
• Fanfare
• IXIA
• MuDynamics
• QualiSystems
• Shunra

It sounds too good to be true - a single framework for managing all of these types of devices from all of these vendors. I hope others will join as well so that we're not stuck with just one choice for some of these areas... I think this is a great idea, and I look forward to seeing the results of this sort of collaboration - I'm actually quite surprised that some of these folks are working together, since they have competing (somewhat) products. I am sure a solution like this won't work for everyone, and I am hoping folks in the alliance will consider the highly customizable nature of this sort of testing, and make sure their solutions keep that aspect in mind - many of us have needs to use our own external <insert whatever it is here> and will need a lot of flexibility in customizing any centralized tool to manage things. Full press release can be found here: Press Releases :: Ixia - Leader in IP Performance Testing