Test and Retest were in a boat.  Test jumped out.  Who was left?

If you want “Wi-Fi that works”, you gotta test, test, and retest.  Silicon Valley is full of some wicked smart software engineers, but nobody gets it right the first time every time.  Because developers are moving at a break-neck pace, with practically every project being one that breaks new technology ground, bugs are the status quo.  In fact, each new firmware revision has a set of release notes that lists all of the known bugs with that release.  Of course, that doesn’t include the ones that VARs and end-users will find later.

I think it should be each vendor’s goal to eliminate as many known-and-fixable bugs as possible prior to releasing code.  Sure, some people do beta testing, but, as my mom used to say, “they give it a lick and a promise” and move right into FCS.  Some vendors push “innovation” so hard that they completely lose sight of the importance of the code working at all.  Sure, customers care about innovation, but they care alot more about the system working as designed, specified, and promised.  In the new State-of-the-Market report for 2009 from Webtorials, 64% of respondents chose reliability as the most important Wi-Fi system characteristic that they value.  In InformationWeek’s 2010 Analytics Report “Nothing but Air”, author and Wi-Fi consultant Grant Moerschel notes that 90% of respondents value reliability over any other system characteristic.  In other words, everyone agrees that Wi-Fi should “just work.”  Wi-Fi is more-or-less synonymous with the Internet, which makes it a de facto utility.  Your lights and water “just work” – why can’t you count on your Wi-Fi for the same kind of reliability?

How do we achieve this Utopian state of Wi-Fi affairs?  I’ll tell you how.  Just like Toyota…oops, wait…scratch that…let’s change industries…Apple Computer (ref: http://bit.ly/6F49C4), you have to design, design, design, and test, test, test.  Ever heard that old saying, “measure twice, cut once?”  I say, “test thrice, support nonce.” Hey, I made that saying up on the spot, so what can you expect?  How shalt we do such testing anywho?  Well, Aerohive uses VeriWave.  Their systems are crazy cool.  If you haven’t checked out their platforms, they do more than you can imagine.  You need 500 stateful clients coming out of one antenna?  No problem.  What about a mega-mix of 802.11b, g, and n for uplink and downlink stress and compatibility testing?  Piece of cake.  Just about all of the Wi-Fi manufacturers use their gear, and for good reason.  We have 4 of their systems (of varying size and configuration), and they’re used a ton around here.  Cabled, chambered, and over-the-air (OTA) automated testing happening just about around the clock.  It’s a testing extravaganza.

I tried to get the big boss man to send me one of those WT20 units for my own testing purposes, but…as you can imagine, that was met with a swift, “Uh, no.”  Rats.  A brother needs…OK, it’s really more “want” than “need”, but you know what I mean…a VeriWave system.  It would allow me to bat “clean-up” on this QA thing.  After test, test, and retest comes Devinator-the-Bug-Hunter-from-Hell.  It would be just like old times at CWNP when we were the free QA dept for every Wi-Fi vendor and their brother.

Shout out to Marcus Burton, lab engineer extraordinaire.  Woot!