WiFi Mesh Testing with LANforge

Testing a multi-node WiFi mesh network can be very complex. Fortunately, the Candela LANforge WiFi mesh test solution packages a number of integrated building blocks and offers a comprehensive, highly repeatable, controllable and automatable mesh testbed in a compact and highly affordable form factor.

Using the LANforge mesh test system, customers can create an entire home network in the lab. The chambers emulate rooms and mobile station location and LANforge systems in each chamber emulate fixed devices (TVs, laptops, phones). The LANforge software allows quick and powerful graphical control of the chambers to emulate physical distance and mobility. Many tests can be automated, substantially decreasing test time and increasing test coverage.

The RF cabling is done in such a way that the test can have full control over each individual connection of both the access and backhaul links in a full mesh topology. The test setup can scale to up to 6 node mesh and also up to 4x4 MIMO testing on both the access and backhaul links.

Includes these Building Blocks

• Station Emulation
• AP Emulation
• RF Enclosures
• Programmable Attenuators
• Traffic Generation feature set (TCP, UDP, HTTP, ...)
• RF Cables, splitters/combiners.

Key Tests

• Data Plane Performance per Hop
• Performance in Different Mesh Configurations
• Station Load Balancing
• Fast Roaming – 802.11k/v/r
• Auto Channel Selection
• Link Failover / Self-Healing
• Video Performance
• Mobile Client Performance / Handover Scenarios
• See Example Mesh Report

Key Measurements

• Throughput/Latency/Loss per Hopp
• Roaming Delays and Network downtime
• Performance over Distance