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Copyright (©) 7signal, 2008 All Rights Reserved

Commercial in Confidence

The information contained in this work (either in whole or in part) is confidential and must not be modified, reproduced, disclosed or disseminated to others or used for purposes other than that for which it is supplied, without the prior written permission of 7signal Oy. If this work or any part hereof is furnished to a third party by virtue of a contract with that party, use of this work by such party shall be governed by the express contractual terms between 7signal Oy, which is party to that contract and the said party.

7signal Sapphire

Product description

Commercial in Confidence of 13

1 Sapphire solution The 7signal Sapphire monitoring and test solution enables WLAN service quality measurements and WLAN service level agreements. Sapphire is a solution that complements controller based and autonomous access points based WLAN networks by bringing visibility to end user service quality in the network. Sapphire operates independently from actual WLAN networking equipment.

The solution consists of three components; Sapphire Eye monitoring station; Sapphire Carat management and reporting software and Sonar test server. With the Sapphire Eye monitoring stations, the system monitors and tests end-to-end network service quality in WLAN network from end user perspective including WLAN, LAN and WAN network connections. Sonar servers are installed in the network to same servers where end user applications (file server, VoIP, SAP, etc) are operated or physically close to them. Sonar operates as test points and measurement counterpart. Measurement results are collected by Sapphire Carat management system. Carat provides visual access to data, automatically delivered SLA and service quality reports, Carat internal alarms and alarms triggered towards external systems.

Figure 1: General picture of the Sapphire system.

Sapphire Eye-unit has advanced antenna arrays and RF electronics and with them can typically monitor 6-12 WLAN access points (depending on environment). Eye-unit is protected against dust and water sprays.

Sapphire Eye performs passive and active tests into monitored WLAN-network. In passive mode it measures real data traffic that is made between end user and access point. In active mode Sapphire Eye acts as end user and is able to test even application that are used. With these tests Sapphire system is able to monitor real end-to-end quality, locate any faults that are affecting the operability of network.

In service provider environments three Sapphire elements may be used flexibly depending on customer and service provider needs. In typical service provider installation, one Carat is installed at service provider site. Eye units are installed to customer sites as needed. In this setup, Carat reports each network as a separate entity


Figure 2: Centralized wireless network management with the Sapphire solution.

2 Sapphire versions

Sapphire product family consists of tailored, WLAN application related product versions. Sapphire edition is the basic version and application area specific product editions complement that with further capabilities.

7signal develops further each of the product editions and may issue as well new editions for new application areas.

2.1 Sapphire

Sapphire edition is targeted for general use in all application areas. Sapphire edition provides extensive set of active and passive measurements, result analysis capabilities, automated reports and alarms.

By listening to radio spectrum passively, Eye unit with directional antennas captures data from surrounding radio traffic and quality of communication between managed access points and associated clients.

By acting like end user client, Eye unit collects end-to-end service quality data from network. Applications for end-to-end testing include for example FTP, HTTP, UDP and ICMP measurements. As well data from radio network connection establishment, IP address retrieval and end-to-end connection availability are included.

Sapphire edition includes associated Eye software, Carat management software, Loupe reporting software and Sonar test point software.

2.2 Sapphire Enterprise

Sapphire Enterprise edition provides further enhanced enterprise application area and VoIP over WLAN specific capabilities on top of Sapphire edition capabilities.

Additional Enterprise capabilities include the following

PSQA active VoIP over WLAN listening quality measurements (MOS scale)


Combined user level reports with summarized data from all measured access points

2.4 GHz spectrum analyzer with user initiated test and automated monitoring

WMM class specific active tests and passive monitoring

3 Sapphire Eye unit The Eye unit performs service quality monitoring and reports results to Carat.

3.1 Electrical and mechanical properties

Basic unit consists of the following elements:

Mechanical parts injection molded polycarbonate plastic (all weather)

Linux computer, 1GB Flash memory

WLAN radio module, 802.11 a/b/g support (2.4 GHz, 4.9 GHz-5.8 GHz)

6 sectored high gain antennas cover 360 degrees in horizontal direction, 1 sectored high gain antenna in vertical direction.

RF board with antenna beam selection capability and low noise amplifiers in receiver chain

Heating element for cold environments

Power over Ethernet (PoE)

Optional elements:

Battery

Electrical compass

GPS receiver and antenna

Spectrum analyzer, 2.4 GHz

3.2 Interfaces and environmental properties

Interfaces:

Ethernet connection (automatic PoE support)

Serial connector

DC power connector, 12V

External WLAN antenna connector (SMA)

Figure 3 : Sapphire Eye


External GPS antenna connector (SMA)

Mounting:

Mounting brackets for ceiling or wall

Environmental protection:

IP55; may be placed outdoors in harsh conditions and in dusty environments

Polycarbonate plastic casing provides excellent UV handling capability in outdoor installations

4 Sapphire Carat software

Carat software manages Eye unit network, reports results and issues alarms when needed.

4.1 Carat Software

Carat consists of three elements:

Carat

Graphical user interface for Eye setup, management and maintenance Ready monitoring profiles and capability for customized profiles Remote capability for user initiated Eye tests Real time alarm window Password protected user accounts with custom access rights Encrypted traffic towards Eye stations Outbound SNMP interface Scheduled SLA and KPI reports via email Remote Eye software upgrade

Carat remote GUI

Full Carat capability from remote connections

Loupe reporting (HTTP browser based)

Graphical data presentation and analysis Access from remote sites with no software installation needed for users Large amount of ready Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) and data visualizations Capabilities include measurements from radio network, end-to-end connections,

point-to-point connections from radio spectrum measurement to application level (like VoIP MOS) measurements

SLA view offers easy to understand color coded view to network end-to-end operation

Network bottleneck view identifies the lowest performing elements in the network


4.2 Carat Graphical User Interface (GUI)

Sapphire setup and maintenance takes place through Carat GUI.

Carat GUI also makes it possible to run instant and remote troubleshooting tests in the desired locations when necessary.

5 Sonar software Sonar is the test counterpart software installed close to end user application server.

Sonar supports all measurements supported by Carat and Eye stations, including FTP, ICMP, PSQA VoIP MOS, packet loss, jitter.

6 Loupe reporting views

6.1 SLA view

Service level agreement view SLA offers easy to interpret time based to view to network operation. Users may set up predefined limits to measurements. In SLA view, time axis is scalable based on the analysis and reporting needs.


An example to SLA view is below.

Condensed SLA view SLA thresholds

Expandable SLA views


6.2 Detailed analysis capability

A large number of Key Performance Indicators can be flexibly viewed with different history duration, granularity and graphing options.

6.3 Multi level reporting

Reporting areas include network, network area, access point and client level. An example of reporting capabilities is included below. End user client retransmission rates for two access points are shown at different times. Data is displayed at access point level or end user client level.


6.4 Easy network bottleneck identification

Loupe automatically filters low performing network elements in the network. This makes it easy to focus network optimization needs on the areas in most need.

6.5 Spectrum analysis over time with source location

Spectrum analysis is available in line graphing with antenna selection and statistical display functions. Spectrum load and even smaller interferences are easy to spot from comprehensive displays. Spectrum analyzer standard resolution is 333kHz.


Spectrum analysis is as well available as waterfall heat maps with antenna selection. Identifying time and location of interference is available.


6.6 Supported Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Carat and its browser based interactive graphical reporting application Loupe offers a large amount of measurements and different views for service quality analysis, troubleshooting and SLA reporting. Loupe supports the below defined measurements at the time of issuing this specification. New measurements may be issued and existing measurements may be modified or removed without a separate notice. Typically all measurements include period minimum, maximum, average and percentile reporting options.

Code Name Description Unit

AV001 Access point beacon availability Measures beacon signal transmission from each monitored AP. The KPI is the relative amount of received and expected beacons.

[%]

AV002 Internet connection availability Measures internet connection availability between the AP and an Eye. [%]

AV004 Number of available APs Number of APs that have sent a beacon in the selected area. [#]

AC001 Radio resource accessibility Measures radio resource reservation success rate. During the test, Eye attempts to associate with the monitored AP. KPI is calculated as the number of successful associations divided by the number of all the association attempts.

[%]

AC002 IP address retrieval success rate Measures DHCP success rate. The KPI is calculated as the amount of successful IP address retrievals divided by all the requests by Eye.

[%]

AC004 Radio attach time Time between Eye starts radio attach to an AP, and attach complete. [ms]

AC005 IP address retrieval time Time between Eye requests an IP address, and IP address retrieved. [ms]

RE001 FTP download success rate Measures FTP download completion rate. [%]

RE002 FTP upload success rate Measures FTP upload completion rate. [%]

QUAP001 FTP downlink throughput Measures downlink throughput in an FTP file transfer. [Mbit/s]

QUAP002 FTP uplink throughput Measures uplink throughput in an FTP file transfer. [Mbit/s]

QUAP005 Listening voice quality (MOS), downlink

MOS (Mean Opinion Score) value of a VoIP downlink test. [MOS]

QUAP006 Listening voice quality (MOS), uplink

MOS (Mean Opinion Score) value of a VoIP uplink test. [MOS]

QUAP007 HTTP downlink throughput Measures downlink throughput in an HTTP document transfer. The test measures both the time of the transfer and the size of the document, from which the throughput in Mbit/s is calculated.

[Mbit/s]

QUAP011 FTP downlink throughput of E2E maximum

Measured throughput divided by the theoretical maximum throughput that is a function of measured SNR.

[%]

QUAP012 FTP uplink throughput of E2E maximum

Measured throughput divided by the theoretical maximum throughput that is a function of measured SNR.

[%]

QUAP013 Jitter in VoIP test The variation of delay (jitter) during VoIP test. [ms]

QUIP006 Packet size, FTP uplink Packet size distribution in FTP uplink transfer test. [byte(s)]

QUIP013 Packet size, HTTP downlink Packet size distribution in FTP uplink transfer test. [byte(s)]

QURS001 Channel noise level at Eye RF noise level in dBm, measured by Eye. [dBm]

QURS002 AP signal level at Eye Measures the AP transmitted power level of radio signal from the Eye point of view. [dBm]

QURS003 AP signal to noise ratio (SNR) at Eye

Measures the AP transmitted power level of radio signal relative to the power level of noise received by an Eye.

[dB]

QURS026 Eye-AP signal level in FTP UL Signal power level between AP and Eye, during an FTP upload tes.t [dBm]

QURS028 Eye-AP SNR in FTP DL Signal to noise ratio between AP and Eye, during an FTP download test. [dB]

QURS029 Eye-AP SNR in FTP UL Signal to noise ratio between AP and Eye, during an FTP upload test. [dB]

QURT004 32B active RTT

Measures the round trip time between Eye and Sonar server. The test uses a serie of pings to ping server 20 times with zero wait time between the pings. The calculation is done internally in Eye and the output of the test is average, 95% percentile, max and min values of RTT. The objective is to measure the ping quality, not ping availability.

[ms]

QURT007 Ping success rate Number of successful pings divided by the total amount of ping attempts. [%]

TR001 AP uplink throughput Measures the amount of uplink data transmitted to an AP during a measurement period. During the test, an Eye listens traffic for 15 sec per each managed access point.

[Kbit/s]

TR002 AP downlink throughput Measures the amount of downlink data transmitted by an AP during a measurement period. During the test, an Eye listens traffic for 15 sec per each managed access point.

[Kbit/s]

TR003 Number of clients per AP Measures the number of concurrent clients using the specified AP during the test. This KPI is measured concurrently with the TRV001 AP uplink throughput.

[#]

QURS005 Client signal level at Eye Measures the signal power level of clients from the Eye point of view. Measures the signal power level of clients from the Eye point of view.

[dBm]

QURS006 Client signal to noise ratio (SNR) at Eye

Measures the signal to noise ratio of clients from the Eye point of view. [dB]

QURS007 Client retransmission rate Number of retransmitted frames divided by the number of all the frames sent to an AP [%]


uplink by a client.

QURS008 Client data uplink rate Traffic balance between Client-transmitter (uplink) and AP-transmitter (downlink). If value is 100%, then all traffic has been uplink (from Client to AP). If value is 0%, then all traffic has been downlink. If value is null, then there has been no traffic in either direction.

[%]

TR012 Client uplink data Measures the amount of uplink data transmitted by a client. [Kbyte]

TR013 Client downlink data Measures the amount of downlink data transmitted to a client. [Kbyte]

7 Server requirements

7.1 Carat server requirements

Hardware

Dedicated server configured as:

x86 32-bit Intel and AMD processors

minimum 2 GB RAM

installation minimum 10GB Hard Disk Space required

database space: depending on network size (for reference, typical data volume = uncompressed raw measurement data/AP/month = circa 50MB)

LAN connection

Typical configuration for up to 25 Eyes: IBM x3400 series (or equivalent), 2GB RAM, 80GB OS/installation, 160 GB RAID1 for database.

Operating System

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Server

CentOS 5

(validated with Fedora Core 8)

Software

Java Runtime Environment 6 or later (JRE 1.6.0_06 accompanies Sapphire software)

Database Management System with XML support (tested with IBM DB2 Viper Express-C 9.5)

Database licensing is required directly from the database supplier

7.2 Carat remote GUI Requirements

Hardware


LAN connection

Operating System



CentOS 5

(validated with Fedora Core 8 and 9)

Windows XP, 2000, 2003 Server, 2007 Server

Software

Java Runtime Environment 6 or later

(JRE 1.6.0_06 accompanies Sonar software)

7.3 Sonar server requirements

Hardware


LAN connection

Operating System


CentOS 5

Software

Java Runtime Environment 6 or later

(JRE 1.6.0_06 accompanies Sonar software)

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