Few things are more frustrating than having to delay bringing a product to market due to a gap in your test planning. After all, the testing process is the time to make adjustments—not to realize that you lack the sufficient tools for gaining a thorough understanding of how your product will perform on a live network.

To expedite your product’s time to market and prevent unnecessary frustration, look for a network emulator that comes with the following features:

1. Extensive reporting capabilities: You’ll want to invest in a network emulator that will give you access to a variety of performance metrics including call duration, packet loss, media received and jitter. Don’t wait until your product reaches the testing stage to realize that you’re missing sufficient reporting features. These should be deal-breakers. 

2. Complete customization: No two networks are exactly alike; each one has its own unique challenges that must be taken into account. Look for a solution, therefore, that can emulate a customizable core network, as well as one that can be used across all stages of the product life cycle through feature, load and conformance testing for each interface, including S1, S5, S7 and S11.

3. Easy access to traffic over internal interfaces: Many leading network emulators make it difficult to connect actual devices with the core network nodes emulated inside. To gain easy access to network traffic over internal interfaces, and facilitate live monitoring, look for a solution, like Valid8’s new M3 4G emulator, that offers access via exposed interfaces.

The M3 4G emulator is a portable network emulator that comes with both real and simulated eNodeB options as well as scalable subsystem capabilities. The M3 4G emulator also includes complete call flows, a full reporting suite and network impairment-simulation features. To learn more about this new solution from Valid8, click here.