User's Manual

THE 7signal Sapphire WQA SOLUTION

Welcome to 7signal Sapphire, providing you with 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

business application (Sapphire Loupe). Both tools can forward results either automatically or

manually to designated persons in the company, or to third parties, such as technical

support or other service provider.

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

impersonate a client device in the target network and then use the network and the services

provided through it. By comparing measurement results to a previously saved acceptable

environment, the solution can detect interfering transmitters, access points and clients

behaving in undesirable ways, and other applications using unregulated frequency bands

that can potentially affect network functionality. Among these applications might be motion

detectors, microwave ovens, Bluetooth devices, powerful electric motors, radiation devices

used for decontamination, and baby monitors. 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. Simply put, 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 in location 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