Full-Range Testing of a 3G/Wi-Fi Connection Management Software

Customer

The End Customer is a Norwegian company providing wireless and cellular solutions for telecom operators around the globe.

Challenge

The Customer turned to ScienceSoft for the custom adaptation of its built-in software for managing 3G/Wi-Fi connection for subscribers of a mobile broadband operator in Southeast Asia. The challenge was to test the application’s handover between 3G and Wi-Fi networks in real time remotely, since it was impossible to set up a local test environment.

Solution

ScienceSoft’s testing team closely cooperated with the Customer’s development and technical teams while delivering the following scope of testing services:

• Test design, test documentation creation and support
• Functional and regressive testing
• Localization testing
• Preparation of firmware builds for USB dongles
• Remote testing

The latter was crucial for testing the hardware and network-dependent software. For this, the team used remote access to computers in the target networks, handling the challenge of losing the remote connection each time the computer on the other side lost connection to the network. Additionally, special software and hardware (USB over Ethernet) was used to test remote USB dongles on the Customer’s side.

As communication with the Customer’s on-site team was integral to the project efficiency, ScienceSoft’s testing engineers directly communicated with the Customer’s technical staff that served test devices and traveled the area on request to change test conditions. To address a significant time zone difference, test sessions were scheduled for as long as possible on a daily basis.

Results

The testing team has detected and successfully fixed significant issues with the application’s security and functionality. Remote testing made possible through multi-channel communication allowed to perform high-quality testing with real devices in the real network environment and receive results in the real time.

Multiple custom versions of the basic application were successfully released for mobile operators in Europe and Asia.

Technologies and Tools

Wireshark, TeamViewer, PuTTY, remote connection to a specialized USB hub, Python.