An increasing proportion of equipment purchased by consumers and businesses are connected to the Internet data network and cloud services. Megatrend has many names: IoT, Internet of Things, Industrial Internet, Industry 4.0, Digitalization. All this will create new value for the product, better customer experience, and cost savings for the customer as long as the network works as expected. But does it work?
One of the challenges when developing an IoT solution is the very different characteristics of telecommunication networks and platforms. Data rates vary from a few kilobytes to hundreds of gigabytes, and delays from a few milliseconds to hundreds of milliseconds. Network quality ranges are especially high for mobile solutions, but also depend on the operating environment. If the target market is an international and emerging market, it should be noted that most countries have a weaker network infrastructure than in Finland.
Network Delay is one of the most important things that affect application speed. The longer the distance from the terminal to the cloud service, the higher the risk of bad user experience. There are also faulty devices in networks. Sometimes devices that are too small at traffic peak times and incorrectly configured network devices that are not necessarily present on the developer network.
The commercial success of the product is ultimately captured by the customer experience. To ensure this, it is advisable to pay attention to different scenarios in the application testing phase. Mobile 3G, 4G, 5G, Ethernet, SD-WAN, MPLS, WiFi 4, 5, and 6 as well as Satellite connections, are very different and affect either the positive or the negative customer experience.
Application testing should, of course, be designed according to the target environment, but also be prepared and understood by the negative user experience caused by the poor-quality network. It is much cheaper to test and optimize than to cause a bad customer experience. Finding the root causes of problems in client environments is also challenging and rarely the developer’s core competence or even within the sphere of influence. The most cost-effective, scalable, and fastest way is to get a professional tool designed for network emulation. This enables a quick experiment to simulate different network environments from the user’s perspective. Test the effect of speed, packet loss, transfer delay, and jitter.
In addition to user experience, it is important to understand the minimum application requirements for a network to be developed. Telecommunications and data transfer is expensive, even more, expensive in an international environment. The product will not succeed if its requirements for the network increase the total cost to heaven. The better the matter can be simulated and tested beforehand, the cheaper the overall solution for the customer and the more secure the commercial goals of the business in the target market.
Hannu Rokka, Senior Advisor
5Feet Networks Oy