Network Experiment

Testing web browsing and application services over a 3G mobile network to measure web load time, battery consumption, IP data volume and radio signalling (two KPIs chosen because they give info about the message signalling load through the network depending on the IP used) using a testbed network. To measure and analyse these two KPIs, two computers that support both protocols with the necessary tools for analysis will be used. The first system having the wire shark application installed and connected directly between the GGSN and the internet to measure the IP data generated by the website or app. And the second system contains a wireless technology under the network vendor being used, and is directly connected to the RNC in the UTMS to measure all messages traveling across the radio part. The configuration used during the experiment corresponds to the UMTS network and the output towards internet is performed using either IPv4 or IPv6. The parameters of the testbed network and the radio timers are set with the same value as the real network. The HLR and DNS servers belong to the real network and provide the web service in the same way that the real network in order to obtain the most reliable results. The IP configuration also corresponds with the real network in order to check if the real network really supports all services under IPv6 operation. Once testing has been performed about 25 times, results are evaluated by analysing traces of all tests using wire shark which allows monitoring each one of the packets traversing over the network. After collecting the data, an average value is used to construct graphs to draw proper conclusions.