User's Manual

1 7signal sapphire – WQA Solution 1
7signal Ltd, Panuntie 6, FI-00620 HELSINKI, FINLAND, [phone], [e-mail], www.7signal.com
7signal Sapphire Carat Carat User Guide Release 3.1
1 7signal sapphire – WQA Solution
Welcome to learn about 7signal Sapphire, that provides you a new way to continuously and
automatically measure the health and quality of a wireless network from the user's
perspective. A commonly used term here is wireless quality assurance, or WQA. Companies
and their business processes are becoming increasingly dependent on the performance and
service quality of their wireless networks. Thanks to the Sapphire WQA solution, companies
can integrate the quality management of wireless networks with their existing IT and
communications technology services.
7signal Sapphire uses monitoring stations (Sapphire Eye) to monitor performance and quality
in WLAN cells and to monitor the surrounding radio frequency environment. The performance
of the customer’s network is tested against a test server (Sonar). Interactive tests, monitoring
stations, and parameters for automatic measurement are managed with a centralized
management tool (Sapphire Carat). The measurement results are reported via a reporting
application (Sapphire Loupe).
The monitoring station, Sapphire Eye, continuously monitors the selected WLAN channels via
passive listening, which does not have an impact on network performance. It can also emulate
a client device in the target network and then use the network and the services provided
through it. By analyzing the measurement results, the solution can detect network
performance and quality-of-service (QoS).The solution can also produce proactive statistics on
the predicted user experience of network performance, which enables the company to
increase network capacity before the users notice loss of performance.
In user emulation tests, also known as active tests, Eye connects to the test server (Sonar) over
the wireless network and uses it like an ordinary production service. The use may include mass
file transfers, browser downloads, wireless VoIP calls, or connections to another production
server. Sapphire tests the end-user experience by examining the entire data chain from the
client to the production service. Active tests can monitor the network even when there are no
users in the network. This makes it possible to forecast performance problems and to take
corrective actions even before the service level suffers. Active tests show the availability and
quality of services offered over the network, and they help administrators to see why some
applications with their various demands for network performance do not work as expected in
the network or some of its areas. When problems occur, active tests can also aid to locate of
the problem area in the network topology, which often includes WLAN, LAN, and WAN
elements.
The key benefits of 7signal Sapphire are user emulation, superb coverage, continuous
monitoring, and visibility of network health. Competing solutions are often based on
monitoring the access point settings. As a result, they do not give any indication of the service
quality experienced by the end user. In such limited solutions, the service quality parameters
measured are the same as in wired networks. Sapphire, by contrast, produces a
comprehensive picture of the radio connection quality, where delay, number of
retransmissions, and packet loss are taken into account, in addition to the commonly
measured parameters.